The Assessment of School Climate

Abstract

School climate measurement is a long-standing topic in educational research. This review article provides an overview and appraisal of school climate measures published between 2003 and 2013 in scientific journals. A search for published school climate instruments for secondary school students was made in three databases. Twelve articles meeting the inclusion criteria were identified and included. Each measure is described in terms of contents, and psychometric and formal quality criteria. Most of the reviewed measures showed good or acceptable results in reliability analyses but insufficient validity testing. Theory-grounding for measurement development is often missing. All instruments include items addressing the relationship among students and between students and teachers while the environmental-structural area is considered the least. This review provides a compact overview of recently published studies using school climate instruments that have also been tested psychometrically. This may be useful for schools, practitioners, and researchers.