Type of Document	Dissertation
Author	Welles, Theresa Lopez
Author's Email Address	tlw05@fsu.edu
URN	etd-08052010-190000
Title	An Analysis of the Academic Success Inventory for College Students: Construct Validity and Factor Scale Invariance
Degree	Doctor of Philosophy
Department	Educational Psychology and Learning Systems, Department of
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Frances Prevatt Committee Chair James Sampson Committee Member Jeannine Turner Committee Member Lee Stepina University Representative
Keywords	College Students Academic Success MANOVA MG-CFA Honors Students
Date of Defense	2010-05-12
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract The Academic Success Inventory for College Students (ASICS) is a newly developed self-report instrument designed to measure academic success in college students. The findings in this study provide evidence for the construct validity of the ASICS by proving reliability and the following subvalidities: face, content, factor, and discriminant. Using MANOVA to compare honors and at-risk college students, significant differences were indicated on most of the scales of the ASICS in the expected direction of more positive functioning by the honors students. Two of the scales, external motivation/future and lack of anxiety indicated no statistically significant differences. Further analysis of factor scale invariance was implemented using MG-CFA, which involved estimation of a series of models testing invariance by comparing the GFI statistics of particular models with between-group constraints. An omnibus test of equality of covariance matrices and mean vectors across two groups was highly significant. Additional configural invariance testing indicated that the general pattern of fixed and free factor loadings in the ten-factor model does not hold across groups. An examination of the MIs revealed that in both groups most items have small to moderate factor loadings on factors with which they are not supposed to be correlated. Explanations for partial invariance are offered and implications for practice and future research are discussed.
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