Linking Academic Entitlement and Student Incivility Using Latent Means Modeling

Abstract

Academic entitlement has been theoretically linked with uncivil student behavior; however, this relationship has not been tested. To address this gap in the literature, the authors used latent means modeling to estimate the relationship between the Academic Entitlement Questionnaire and uncivil student behavior. The authors gathered scores on the questionnaire from 2 samples of students: civil/compliant and uncivil/noncompliant. Measurement invariance was established for the Academic Entitlement Questionnaire, providing additional validity evidence for the scale and allowing for the estimation of the latent mean difference in academic entitlement. As predicted, noncompliant students were significantly higher in academic entitlement than were compliant students. These results empirically link academic entitlement and student incivility, further supporting that academic entitlement is an important construct in academia and should receive increased attention from educators.

Keywords:

• behavior problems
• college students
• factor analysis
• higher education
• structural equation modeling