A Cross-cultural Study of the Validity of a Battery of Questionnaires for Assessing School Climate Quality

Abstract

This paper studies the validity of the School Climate Battery of Questionnaires for Secondary and High School Teachers (SCBQ-SHST). The battery includes five questionnaires: Quality of Leadership, Quality of Teachers’ Support, School Motivational Orientation, Quality of Students’ Attitude, and Quality of Parental Support. A total of 178 teachers from Costa Rica were compared with 343 Spanish teachers. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the questionnaires allow assessing teachers’ perceptions of the different dimensions of school climate in a valid and reliable way in both Spain and Costa Rica. Differences in the perception of Spanish and Costa Rican teachers about school climate shown by multigroup confirmatory factor analyses are discussed as well as theoretical and practical implications.

Keywords

• school climate
• teachers’ perceptions
• cross-cultural validity
• school climate assessment
• school leadership