Construct validity evidence for the Student Aspirations Survey

The influence of students ' affective development-especially student aspirations-upon academic and life achieve-ment is gaining significant attention in the literature. However, psychometrically sound instruments that measure student aspirations and students perceptions ofschool climate characteristics that influence aspirations are not available for use by educators attempting to guide school reform efforts. The Student Aspirations Survey was administered to 1,160 stu-dents in two rural middle and two rural high schools. Responses were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis, and results suggest that evidence ofconstruct validity is considerable for student responses to the aspirations scales and very limited for student responses to the school climate scales (possibly due to the very high factor correlations). A small to moderate method effect may be present among student responses to the aspirations scales. Suggestions for improvement of score interpretation are provided. In the current era of educational reform, techniques and agendas for educational improvement are quite com-mon. In particular, the influence of student affect upon student achievement and general well-being receives a sig-nificant amount of attention in the educational and psycho-logical literature, certainly more than was present a decade or two ago (cf. Weiner, 1979; Weiner, 1994). Self-efficacy (Bandura, 1993; Schunk, 1985), or self-concept more gen