Development and Validation of the Student Interest and Engagement Scales

A series of studies report the development of empirically derived instruments that measure student interest and engagement. The first study inductively develops an initial item pool through open-ended questionnaire data. A second study subjects the measures to exploratory factor analysis to ascertain an underlying factor structure. The third study deductively tests the measures through confirmatory factor analysis and examines associations among teacher communication behaviors, student emotional and cognitive interest, and engagement. A fourth study offers discriminant validity evidence, suggesting that the new measures are distinct from scales that assess similar yet divergent constructs. Guided by prior theory (Mottet, Frymier, & Beebe, 2006 Mottet, T. P., Frymier, A. B. and Beebe, S. A. 2006. “Theorizing about instructional communication”. In Handbook of instructional communication, Edited by: Mottet, T. P., Richmond, V. P. and McCroskey, J. C. 255–282. Boston, MA: Pearson. Google Scholar) and research (Harp & Mayer, 1997 Harp, S. F. and Mayer, R. E. 1997. The role of interest in learning from scientific text and illustration: On the distinction between emotional interest and cognitive interest. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89: 92–102. Crossref, Web of Science ® , Google Scholar), the instruments developed here possess heuristic potential for instructional communication research. Implications and areas for future research are discussed.