Design and Exploratory Factor Analysis of a New School Connectedness Scale

School connectedness is found to be directly related to adolescents’ academic achievement, peer acceptance, social emotional well-being, and their decisions to remain in school. Given its importance, school connectedness has become an important goal in educational reform initiatives. However, the construct of and terminology for studying school connectedness remain unclear and there is no consensus on what core latent traits of school connectedness should be measured. This study aims to design a new and easy-to-use school connectedness scale. The researchers will examine factor analysis results from existing literature, and borrow items from existing scales. Except for experts’ advice, adolescents’ opinions will be elicited when deciding what items to keep or revise and building new items for the new scale. The new scale will cover a few factors that adolescents think are most relevant to their school connectedness. A 4-point Likert scale will be used for students to respond to each item. Then it will be administered in a high school and a middle school in Columbia, SC. An exploratory factor analysis will be conducted to find out its underlying factor structure. Effort will also be made to give a new definition of school connectedness based on the factor analysis result