Understanding Change in Self-reported Undergraduate Attributes: A Repeated Measures Survey of Students in Education
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Understanding Change in Self‑reported Undergraduate Attributes: A Repeated Measures Survey of Students in Education Gavin T. L. Brown1 · Makayla P. Grays1 Received: 17 August 2020 / Accepted: 9 October 2020 © New Zealand Association for Research in Education 2020
Abstract Higher education learning outcomes include attributes that are conventionally evaluated by self-reported responses to questionnaire items. Important personal traits include intellectual curiosity and openness to diverse ideas, experiences, and peoples. Evaluators need evidence for the validity and stability of research instruments across repeated administrations. This paper reports a repeated measures (early and late the same academic year) factor analytic study using three cohorts of students (first-year undergraduate, final-year undergraduate, and graduates) in one faculty to evaluate the psychometric properties of scales. Confirmatory factor analysis with invariance testing identified revised models which had configural, metric, and scalar invariance across both time points. Post-graduate students were different from undergraduate students on four scales. However, final-year students became more like graduate students and less like first-year students for curiosity and love of learning. Results are consistent with assumption that having a degree is associated with acquisition of desired personal attributes. Keywords Graduate attributes · Curiosity · Openness · Repeated measures · Factor analysis · Survey research
Introduction There is a global interest in the quality of student experiences in higher education and a growing demand for evidence that undergraduate education provides value beyond career preparation and placement (Hazelkorn et al. 2018). The student is expected to benefit from a university education in ways that meet society’s, as well as their own, expectations. Such benefits, as ephemeral as they may be, need to be * Gavin T. L. Brown [email protected] 1
Quantitative‑Data Analysis Research Unit, Faculty of Education & Social Work, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
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Vol.:(0123456789)
New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies
assessed for accountability purposes, as well as for institutional self-evaluation and improvement. Conventionally, outcome evaluation looks at academic performance indicators (Shavelson et al. 2018), but attention to student dispositions or attributes can be a valid way to examine the impact an institution has on student learning (Klemenčič 2018; Kuh and Jankowski 2018). If participation and graduation from an institution of higher education leads to the development of positive attitudes towards society and intellectual endeavours, that is probably the sign of an effective system. Hence, this paper reports changes in important intellectual attributes (i.e., love of learning and openness) in one faculty at two time-points in the academic year (i.e., early and late) with students at three time-points in the academic trajectory (i.e., first year, last year, and post-grad
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