Doubly Latent Multilevel Analyses of Classroom Climate: An Illustration

Abstract

Many classroom climate studies suffer from 2 critical problems: They (a) treat climate as a student-level (L1) variable in single-level analyses instead of a classroom-level (L2) construct in multilevel analyses; and (b) rely on manifest-variable models rather than on latent-variable models that control measurement error at L1 and L2, and sampling error in the aggregation of L1 ratings to form L2 constructs. On the basis of an analysis of 2,541 students in Grades 5 or 6 from 89 classrooms, the authors demonstrate doubly latent multilevel structural equation models that overcome both of these problems. The results show that L2 classroom climate (a higher-order factor representing classroom mastery goal orientation, challenge, and teacher caring) had positive effects on self-efficacy and achievement. The authors conclude with a discussion of related issues (e.g., the meaning of L2 constructs vs. L1 residuals, the dimensionality of climate constructs at L2) and guidelines for future research.

[Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of The Journal of Experimental Education for the following free supplemental resource(s): Appendices and Supplemental Tables.]

Keywords:

• achievement
• classroom climate
• doubly latent multilevel structural equation models
• self-efficacy

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors are very grateful to the authors of the original Fast, Lewis, Bryant, Bocian, Cardullo, Rettig, and Hammond (2010) study, and especially to Lisa A. Fast and James L. Lewis, who were particularly helpful at the initial stage of this research. The authors appreciate their willingness to provide the original and expanded data set and to help set up the analyses. The authors note, however, that the interpretations of the data are the responsibility of their study and may not represent those of Fast and colleagues. The revision of this article was conducted while the first author was a visiting scholar at the University of Cagliari.

The first two authors contributed equally to this article and their order was determined at random: Both should thus be considered first authors.