Use of Lisrel in Empirical Test Validation: An Illustration Using a Classroom Environment Instrument

Abstract

LISREL was used to provide some widely applicable methods for testing the empirical structure of an instrument in terms of both respondents' answers to items and expert judges' categorizations of items. Whereas confirmatory maximum-likelihood factor analysis was employed to test the dimensionality of respondents' answers, latent partition analysis (involving factor analysis of a joint proportions matrix) was used to assess the structure of judges' categorizations. These general techniques were illustrated with data collected using a short form of a classroom environment instrument called the My Class Inventory. The samples were of 600 third grade students who responded to all items and a group of 85 teachers who assigned items to categories. Although analyses suggested that the five-scale conceptual structure implicit in the My Class Inventory was evident neither in the responses of students to items nor in teachers' categorizations of items, the study attests to the general usefulness and wide applicability of LISREL in testing the empirical structure of various instruments.