Community engagement and civic learning have become increasingly common components of higher education in the United States. Service-learning programs are one way to promote civic learning. Researchers and practitioners must evaluate the effectiveness of service learning by measuring the degree to which it results in meaningful student-level outcomes. The Public Affairs Scale has been developed as a valid and reliable measure of civic learning in the three domains of community engagement, cultural competence, and ethical leadership. However, the scale contains 40 items and can take a long time to administer. This study sought to create and validate a short version of the Public Affairs Scale. Using exploratory factory analysis, we identified a 15-item structure and then subjected it to confirmatory factor analysis. Results of confirmatory factor analysis supported the 15-item short scale version of the Public Affairs Scale. The short scale was found to correlate with similar measures of service-learning outcomes.
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