Development and Validation of a Set of University Involvement Scales

Student involvement and participation in the college environment has been shown to be positively correlated with remaining in school. However, because there has been limited work on measuring involvement, this research reports on the development and validation of a set of involvement scales. Nine involvement scales were administered to entering freshmen at the middle of the first semester and again at the middle of the second semester. Scale items were designed to assess the presence or absence of students' participation in different activities during a semester and their level of participation. Internal consistency and test/retest reliabilities were generally moderate, and scale intercorrelations were low. Correlations of the scales with a series of criterion items produced higher relationships for similar areas versus dissimilar areas. The results suggest that the scales can be used in research requiring comparisons of groups, but refinement will be necessary before the scales can serve as diagnostic aids for use with individuals.