Thayer Andrew J, Cook Clayton R, Davis Chayna, Brown Eric C, Locke Jill, Ehrhart Mark G, Aarons Gregory A, Picozzi Elissa, Lyon Aaron R
Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA.
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Implement Res Pract. 2022 Aug 4;3:26334895221116065. doi: 10.1177/26334895221116065. eCollection 2022 Jan-Dec.
Implementation climate is an organizational construct theorized to facilitate the adoption and delivery of evidence-based practices. Within schools, teachers often are tasked with implementing universal prevention programs. Therefore, they are ideal informants when assessing school implementation climate for initial and continuous implementation improvement efforts. The purpose of this study was to examine the construct validity (i.e., factor structure and convergent/divergent validity) of a school-adapted measure of strategic implementation climate called the School Implementation Climate Scale (SICS).
Confirmatory factor analyses of SICS data, collected from 441 teachers in 52 schools, were used to compare uncorrelated and correlated first-order factor models and a second-order hierarchical model. Correlations with other school measures were examined to assess SICS convergent and divergent validities.
Results demonstrated acceptable internal consistency for each SICS subscale (s > 0.80 for all subscales) and construct validity of the hypothesized factor structure of the SICS with three new scales. The hierarchical second-order factor structure with eight first-order factors was found to best model the SICS data. Correlations with other school measures were in the expected direction and magnitude.
Results from this study provide psychometric evidence that supports the use of the SICS to inform the implementation research and practice in schools.
Schools are busy trying to implement various universal programs and systems to help support kids in their growth. Beginning and sustaining these efforts is quite challenging, and there is need for tools and ideas to help those implementation efforts. One concept is implementation climate, which is broadly the school staff's perception of the implementation support for a given practice. However, no measure currently exists to help schools assess their implementation climate. The goal of our study was to adapt a measure of implementation climate used in other settings to the school environment. We used feedback from educational experts to make changes and used various analyses to determine if the newly adapted measure was psychometrically sound. Findings suggest the new measure is usable to guide implementation efforts in schools.
实施氛围是一种组织概念，理论上有助于循证实践的采用和实施。在学校中，教师通常负责实施普遍预防计划。因此，在评估学校实施氛围以进行初步和持续的实施改进工作时，他们是理想的信息提供者。本研究的目的是检验一种适用于学校的战略实施氛围测量工具——学校实施氛围量表（SICS）的结构效度（即因子结构和聚合/区分效度）。
对从52所学校的441名教师收集的SICS数据进行验证性因子分析，以比较不相关和相关的一阶因子模型以及二阶层次模型。检查与其他学校测量工具的相关性，以评估SICS的聚合效度和区分效度。
结果表明，每个SICS子量表都具有可接受的内部一致性（所有子量表的s>0.80），并且SICS的假设因子结构与三个新量表具有结构效度。发现具有八个一阶因子的层次二阶因子结构最能拟合SICS数据。与其他学校测量工具的相关性在预期的方向和程度上。
本研究结果提供了心理测量学证据，支持使用SICS为学校的实施研究和实践提供信息。
学校正忙于尝试实施各种普遍计划和系统，以帮助支持孩子们成长。启动并维持这些努力颇具挑战性，需要工具和理念来助力这些实施工作。一个概念是实施氛围，大致是指学校工作人员对特定实践的实施支持的感知。然而，目前尚无测量工具可帮助学校评估其实施氛围。我们研究的目标是将在其他环境中使用的实施氛围测量工具调整为适用于学校环境。我们利用教育专家的反馈进行修改，并使用各种分析来确定新调整的测量工具在心理测量学上是否合理。研究结果表明，新测量工具可用于指导学校的实施工作。
