The ways in which faculty navigate the relationship between their personal identity and the identities of their military connected students, especially concerning their approaches to teaching behaviors (Barnard-Brak, Bagby, Jones, & Sulak, 2011) are influenced by normative values that their institution or department supports (Weidman, 1989) as well as by the values that they themselves hold (Barnard-Brak et al., 2011). Given the fraught history of academia and the military (Summerlot, Green, & Parker, 2009; Downs & Murtazashvili, 2012), such variables are especially important to measure as student-faculty interaction impacts student learning outcomes (Cruce, Wolniak, Seifert, & Pascarella, 2006; Ethington, 2000; Kim, 2010; Kim & Sax, 2009, 2011, 2015).
Toward that end, the primary purpose of this study was to create a multi-institutional survey instrument that operationalizes perceptions of teaching behaviors amongst faculty who educate military-connected students (MCS) at civilian colleges and universities. Main objectives included creating and developing items specific to unique teaching behaviors and ensuring validity of this instrument.
I used a variety of analyses to create the instrument and to ensure validity of content within the survey. I followed DeVellis’ (2017) model for scale development to create and validate the Military-Connected Student-Faculty Interaction Questionnaire (MCSFI-Q). Eleven field experts participated in cognitive interviews to provide sources of evidence for construct validity (Miller et al., 2014) as well as to uncover and resolve content validity and construct validity issues (Padilla & BenĂtez, 2014).
Following data collection, I conducted content and construct validity analysis to develop a valid and more parsimonious survey instrument. Results from all analyses led to the conclusion that the MCSFI-Q is comprised of conceptually valid items that operationalize teaching behaviors amongst faculty who educate MCS at civilian colleges and universities and that the MCSFI-Q has the potential to collect accurate data. Research next steps include further empirical testing in order for the MCSFI-Q to be useable in measuring teaching norms amongst faculty who educate MCS at civilian colleges and universities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvm.edu/oai:scholarworks.uvm.edu:graddis-2141 |
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| Creators | Rousseau, Jennifer J. |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks @ UVM |
| Source Sets | University of Vermont |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Graduate College Dissertations and Theses |
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