Abstract

University commitment is critical to university success, as it positively impacts retention, as well as many other student attitudes and behaviors (Beil, Reisen, Zea, & Caplan, 1999; Tinto, 1987; Tinto, 2006; Woosley & Miller, 2009). Therefore, psychometrically sound measures of university commitment are of great importance to universities. The present study seeks to test the psychometric properties of a newly developed scale of university commitment. This study measured the internal consistency reliability, content validity, and construct validity of the newly created measure. Divergent validity was evaluated by comparing the new measure to the Perceived Academic Achievement Scale (Meagher, 2012) and student grade point averages (GPA); there were no significant relationships between university commitment, its components, and perceived academic ability or GPA. Convergent validity was evaluated by comparing the new measure to the University Attachment Scale (France, Finney, & Swerdzewski, 2010). Positive, significant relationships were found between this scale and university commitment, as well as its three components. Additionally, because student engagement (Schaufelil, Martinez, Pinto, Salanova, & Bakker, 2002) is a commonly measured and conceptually related construct, it was measured to examine the degree of relationship and conceptual overlap between the two constructs; a positive, significant relationship was found.

Advisor

Lisa Perez

Committee Member

Andrea Lassiter

Committee Member

Richard Auger

Date of Degree

2014

Language

english

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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