Construction of school characteristics using multilevel confirmatory factor analysis

摘要

This project aims to compare the use of multilevel confirmatory factor analysis with more traditional methods of factor construction at a higher group level in the context of educational effectiveness research. School process characteristics were constructed (1) by means of two-level confirmatory factor analyses, and (2) using exploratory factor analyses at individual level. To this end data provided by 684 teachers from 54 schools on a school characteristics questionnaire were analyzed. The results indicate a less complicated factor structure at the school level as compared to the teacher level within the multilevel confirmatory factor models. Some differences in factor structure between the exploratory factor analysis and the multilevel confirmatory analyses at school level are observed, while no substantial differences in factor meaning were found.