QUALITY OF SCHOOL LIFE - A SCALE TO MEASURE STUDENT EXPERIENCE OR SCHOOL CLIMATE

The purpose of this study was to examine school (institutional) influe nces on the latent structure of the seven subscales of the Quality of School Life scale, a measure of school life at the student level. A to tal of 5,932 twelfth-year students (3,048 males and 2,884 females) enr olled in 50 Australian parochial schools were administered the instrum ent. Structural equation models were fit to the subscales and the subs equent variance component analysis revealed that only about 2%-3% of t he variances were explained by between-school differences. As predicte d, results of two-level factor analyses supported the findings that th e school level has only a small effect on the factor structure of the items making up the scales.