Assessing College Student Engagement: Development and Validation of the Student Course Engagement Scale

Abstract

Student engagement appears to be associated with high-quality learning outcomes. Thus, it is important to measure whether students are engaging effectively in class. This article describes the development and validation of a measure of student engagement named the Student Course Engagement Scale (SCES). Exploratory and confirmatory analyses were conducted on two independent samples ( n = 543 and n = 893, respectively) of Taiwanese college students. The resultant 20-item SCES demonstrated good reliability and factorial validity as well as being correlated positively with other engagement measures. The results also confirm the measurement invariance of the five-factors SCES across different gender groups. This instrument provides a practical and valuable tool for assessing course engagement among Chinese college students.