Gender and grade effects in the structure of academic motivation and engagement : a higher order confirmatory factor analysis approach

![CDATA[The question of whether a given instrument measures the same components with equal validity for boys and girls of different ages is an important one. Most research typically assesses mean-level differences between groups on key measures, too often neglecting to assess whether the structure of the measures are invariant across groups. The Student Motivation and Engagement Scale (SMES) is a recently developed multidimensional instrument designed to measure high school students’ academic motivation through eleven first order factors and four higher order factors. This study examined the factor structure and psychometric properties of the SMES using a representative sample of 3,561 Australian high school students in years 7 to 12. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) provide support for both the first order factor structure and higher order factor structure of the SMES. Furthermore, invariance tests evaluated whether factor loadings, factor covariances, residuals and the factor structure of the SMES were invariant across gender and grade. Results of the multigroup CFAs and implications of these findings are discussed.]]