Measurement Invariance of Expectancy-Value Questionnaire in Physical Education

Expectancy-Value Questionnaire (EVQ) measures student expectancy beliefs and task values of the domain content (Eccles & Wigfield, 1995). In this study the authors examine measurement invariance of EVQ in the domain of physical education between elementary and middle-school students. Participants included 811 students (3rd-5th grades) from 13 elementary and 903 (6th-8th grades) from 13 middle schools. Students completed the EVQ in their physical education classes within the same semester. A series of hierarchical steps for testing the measurement invariance were conducted based on means and covariance structures. The results suggest that the questionnaire possesses configural and metric invariance, but noninvariant item intercepts between these two groups of students ([vertical bar][Delta]CFI [vertical bar] greater than 0.05). EVQ can be used to measure expectancy-value constructs in physical education for both middle-school and elementary students. Yet the noninvariant item intercepts posted questions on how the measured construct difference should be interpreted. (Contains 1 figure and 5 tables.)