Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Transfer Student Adjustment (original) (raw)

Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 2013

Abstract

ABSTRACT Transfer students' adjustment to college has received substantial attention by researchers. This focus has predominately investigated the observation of transfer shock: a decrease in grade point average (GPA) experienced after transferring. In response to the persistent focus on transfer shock, growing attention has been directed toward other indicators of college adjustment suggesting that students who transfer may experience adjustment difficulties in domains other than academics (e.g., social and psychological). In addition, studies indicate that student experience in college differs by gender and race, and there are increased calls to determine the factors that differentiate these groups. However, no studies have validated whether different types of college adjustment are analytically distinct constructs and whether they differ by demographic group. This article uses confirmatory factor analysis to examine the factorial structure and measurement invariance of items from the Laanan-Transfer Student Questionnaire (Laanan 2004), an inventory designed to measure the multiple facets of transfer student adjustment. We use data from 1,079 engineering transfer students from the Project to Assess Climate in Engineering (PACE) survey. The overall findings support the factorial structure of adjustment being divided into academic, social, and psychological dimensions and show that these measures are invariant across sex, race/ethnicity, and transfer institution type. The findings from this study are important for researchers using such constructs in research studies and for developing programs that specifically target the various domains of adjustment.

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