Co-operative learning, psychometric adaptation, and invariability of the academic satisfaction scale in Spanish university students

María Auxiliadora Robles-Bello; David Sánchez-Teruel; Óscar Gavin Chocano; Alfonso González Luque; José Antonio Camacho Conde

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.864510

Co-operative learning, psychometric adaptation, and invariability of the academic satisfaction scale in Spanish university students

Front Psychol. 2022 Sep 21:13:864510. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.864510. eCollection 2022.

Authors

María Auxiliadora Robles-Bello¹, David Sánchez-Teruel², Óscar Gavin Chocano¹, Alfonso González Luque³, José Antonio Camacho Conde⁴

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences, University of Jaén, Jaén, Spain.
² Faculty of Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
³ Faculty of Sciences, National University of Distance Education (UNED), Madrid, Spain.
⁴ Faculty of Education, Economy and Technology of Ceuta, University of Granada, Ceuta, Spain.

Abstract

It is necessary to understand the measurement of academic satisfaction (AS) in a variety of cross-cultural contexts. The first aim was to evaluate the psychometric properties of AS scale, to explore its structural validity, to assess its differential item function, including gender and age invariance in university students. Study 2 aimed to assess whether AS improved after the application of a teaching instructional approach based on cooperative learning (CL), while a cross-sectional study was performed in several stages. Descriptive, confirmatory, and scale reliability analyses were carried out with indices for goodness-of-fit, such that a new scale was obtained with a single-factor structure. A reduction to 6-items in this sample exhibited better psychometric properties. Configural invariance by gender and age indicated that men and women had a similar understanding of the new scale. Given significant differences between groups, the CL group scored higher in AS.

Keywords: Spanish population; academic satisfaction; cooperative learning; invariance; psychometric properties.