著者

山岸 鮎実 朝倉 隆司

出版者

一般社団法人 日本学校保健学会

雑誌

学校保健研究 (ISSN:03869598)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.63, no.4, pp.218-232, 2022-01-20 (Released:2022-02-11)

参考文献数

49

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Background: School engagement (SE) is a comprehensive concept encompassing the active engagement of children and students with their school lives in three respects: behavior, emotion, and recognition. This key concept can solve contemporary educational challenges. In Japan, a few earlier studies have specifically examined elementary and junior high school students and university students but no report of the relevant literature describes a study of senior high school students. Moreover, no report describes a study assessing correlation between SE and health. Objective: This research was conducted to develop SE scales fit for Japanese high school students, to confirm their validity and reliability and to elucidate the correlation between the SE scales and health indicators. Methods: Based on the literature review and group interviews conducted of high school students (15 in all), we designed SE scales (53 items) comprising behavior SE (15 items), emotion SE (19 items), and recognition SE (19 items), and conducted an anonymous self-administered questionnaire of first-year and second-year students (1,030 in all) of two metropolitan high schools. As the analytical method, we first identified the factor structure using exploratory factor analysis and subsequently examined their construct validity using the confirmatory factor analytic procedure. Additionally, we examined their criterion validity in terms of correlation between academic competence, health and safety behaviors (health-promoting and devastating behaviors). We confirmed the reliability of the scales using Cronbach's coefficient α. At last, we explored the correlation between SE scales and health indicators (physical symptoms and depression) using a generalized linear model. Results: According to factor analysis results, the behavior SE scales comprised 15 items categorized into five factors: extracurricular activities, class or school events, relationships with friends, academic work, and discipline. The emotion SE scales included 18 items of five factors: academic work, class, extracurricular activities, relationships with friends, and school. The recognition SE scales had 13 items of two factors: fostering of qualities and knowledge acquisition. Collectively, they were 46 items. In terms of the goodness of fit of each SE scale measurement model, RMSEA was less than or equal to 0.08; CFI was greater than or equal to 0.95, meaning that the construct validity was good. In terms of the criterion validity, the SE scales showed significant relations to academic achievement and health-promoting behaviors, by which the findings of earlier studies were able to be represented to a certain degree. The internal consistency of the scales was good, with α coefficients greater than or equal to 0.9. The considerations above allowed us to judge the reliability and validity of the SE scales as generally good. After adjusting for confounding variables, we examined the association between the SE scales and health indicators. Results show that the behavior SE was significantly and negatively associated with physical symptom scores and depression scale. Conclusion: The high-school students' SE scales have been developed to approach their school life and demonstrated the validity and reliability comprehensively and successfully. By exploring further the structure of the relationship between the SE scales and health among high school students, we can contribute to solutions of educational problems and health promotion for them.