Measurement Equivalence of the PALS Academic Self-Efficacy Scale.

There is consistent evidence of the importance of academic self-efficacy beliefs within educational research, as they are linked to critical academic outcomes. Ethnic and gender differences in academic self-efficacy have been found in nations outside of the United States, suggesting differences in how individual students perceive their academic abilities. However, if researchers are interested in making mean-level comparisons of academic self-efficacy across diverse subpopulations of students, it is imperative to assess the measurement equivalence of the scale used across these subgroups prior to drawing any conclusions based on score inferences. The current study assessed the measurement invariance of the academic self-efficacy scale of the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scales (PALS; Midgley et al., 2000) across gender and race among 4,148 high school students in the Southeastern US. The results indicated partial measurement invariance across African American females, African American males, Caucasian females, and Caucasian males, providing initial support for the same factor structure across groups. However, caution should be taken in considering any mean-level differences, as support for only weak invariance was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]