ABSTRACT

The Drug Free Schools and Communities Act scale (DFSCA) has been widely used to measure school engagement in studies utilizing the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) data. Recent analyses using NSCAW-I suggest that the best use of the DFSCA scale is a three-factor structure measuring emotional, behavioral, and cognitive-behavioral engagement. However, this three-factor structure presented concerns with the cognitive-behavioral engagement construct, warranting further analyses. This study aimed to test the three-factor structure in separate samples, and to test an alternative model that excluded the cognitive-behavioral engagement construct. Using NSCAW-II data, we performed a series of confirmatory factor analyses, to explore the fit of the hypothesized and alternative models across three random samples. We extracted three random samples from the NSCAW-II data, without replication. Each sub-sample represented 20 % of the larger NSCAW-II sample. The samples included children between the ages of 6 and 15 who were involved with the child welfare system due to a maltreatment report. Results indicated that both the three-factor structure that includes the cognitive-behavioral engagement construct, and the two-factor structure that excludes the factor fit the data well. Implications for using these factor structures in future research is discussed.

摘要

《无毒品学校和社区法案》量表 (DFSCA) 已被广泛用于衡量学校参与利用全国儿童和青少年福祉调查 (NSCAW) 数据进行的研究。最近使用 NSCAW-I 的分析表明，DFSCA 量表的最佳用途是测量情绪、行为和认知行为参与的三因素结构。然而，这种三因素结构对认知行为参与结构提出了担忧，需要进一步分析。本研究旨在测试不同样本中的三因素结构，并测试排除认知行为参与结构的替代模型。使用 NSCAW-II 数据，我们进行了一系列验证性因素分析，以探索假设模型和替代模型在三个随机样本中的拟合度。我们从 NSCAW-II 数据中提取了三个随机样本，没有复制。每个子样本代表较大 NSCAW-II 样本的 20%。样本包括因虐待报告而参与儿童福利系统的 6 至 15 岁儿童。结果表明，包括认知行为参与结构的三因素结构和排除该因素的双因素结构都很好地拟合了数据。讨论了在未来研究中使用这些因子结构的意义。结果表明，包括认知行为参与结构的三因素结构和排除该因素的双因素结构都很好地拟合了数据。讨论了在未来研究中使用这些因子结构的意义。结果表明，包括认知行为参与结构的三因素结构和排除该因素的双因素结构都很好地拟合了数据。讨论了在未来研究中使用这些因子结构的意义。