Project Description:
Title: Assessing Self-Determination in the Era of Evidence-Based
Practices: The Development and Validation of Student and Adult Measures of Self-Determination
RFA Topic and Goal: Transition Outcomes for Secondary Students with Disabilities, Goal Five: Measurement
Purpose: To develop a reliable and valid assessment of the self-determination of youth and young adults with and without disabilities, tentatively titled the Self-Determination Inventory System (SDIS), the development of which will begin with items from an extant, widely used student self-report measure of self-determination that was designed based upon a theoretical framework developed and validated by the lead PI. The resulting assessment will be designed within a Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT) model in which the assessment successively selects questions so as to maximize the precision of the exam based on what is known about the test-taker from previous questions. We will identify, from the larger pool of items, a smaller pool of items that are representative of each domain across levels of self-determination to serve as probe items within the CAT process. Once a students level is established through the CAT process, he or she will then proceed to respond to a larger pool of items linked to that level that can provide more detailed information about his or her level in each theoretical domain. The PI has expertise in Universal Design and Universal Design for Learning, and will ensure that the process is accessible to students across disability categories. The adult-report form will be designed using the same items, except in a proxy report format, and will be appropriate for use by teachers and parents or family members to provide information about a students self-determination.
Setting: Student data will be collected by educators working with students with and without disabilities in middle and high schools, community colleges, and Institutes of Higher Education across the country. Data for the adult-report form will be collected from teachers and parents of students with and without disabilities.
Sample: Participants will be adolescents and young adults both with and without disabilities ages 13 to 22 and adults who teach or are parents of these students. The items will be calibrated on a sample of approximately 3600 youth and 1600 adults. We will employ a stratified-purposive design with random selection. That is, the sample will be stratified by age (13-14, 15-16, 17-18, 19-20, and 21-22). Since the main goal of this project is to develop a measure that can work for youth with and without disabilities, we will also stratify and over-sample students with disabilities, grouped based upon the major IDEA categorical. This rubric will yield 6 disability categories (with the no-disability group included) by 5 age groups, or 30 cells in which we will sample approximately 120 persons per cell.
Intervention: Not applicable, this is a Measurement Goal project.
Control: Not applicable, this is a Measurement Goal project.
Research Method: The project implements procedures associated with Item Response Theory and will implement rigorous procedures, including a stratified-purposive design with random selection, to develop a measure that is factorial invariant across forms and subgroups and will accurately gauge the self-determination of a target, spanning youth with and without disabilities
Measurement: This is a Measurement Goal project, but we will use extant measures of locus of control, hope, and autonomous functioning as measures of criterion-related validity.
Data Analysis: The assessment will be built using Item Response Theory analyses with adequate analyses to evaluate measurement equivalence and to ensure the content validity of the items, the convergent and discriminant criterion-related validity among the constructs, and the measurement invariance of the scale across age, disability, and testing site.
Target Audience:
Professionals and Para-Professionals, Family Members/Caregivers, Adults with Disabilities, Children/Adolescents with Disabilities/SHCN
