Students’ situational engagement and its association with overall engagement: the application of the InSitu instrument in the context of a Norwegian lower secondary school

Figures & data

Figure 1. The multilevel structural equation model, with standardized parameter estimates, for a fivedimensional concept of students’ situational engagement, when overall behavioral engagement, overall emotional engagement, student gender, grade level and student SES are included. Due to a non-significant negative residual variance for Daff1 at the between level, the estimate was fixed at 0.01. Only significant paths are shown. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

Table 1. Questions included in the InSitu instrument (17 items).

1. Behavioural and cognitive engagement (7 items)
Item BehCogn^1	How important did you find the studied content?
Item BehCogn^2	How much did you try to act according to the teacher’s wishes?
Item BehCogn^3	How much effort did you invest in making the teacher pleased with you?
Item BehCogn^4	To what extent were you prepared for the lesson?
Item BehCogn^5	How well did you concentrate during the lesson?
Item BehCogn^6	How persistent were you in studying during the lesson?
Item BehCogn^7	How much did you plan your tasks ahead instead of just doing them right away?
2. Emotional engagement (3 items)
Item Emo^1	How much did you like this lesson?
Item Emo^2	How pleasing did you find the studied tasks?
Item Emo^3	How enjoyable was the lesson?
3. Competence experiences (2 items)
Item Comp^1	How easy was the lesson for you?
Item Comp^2	How well did you understand what was taught?
4. Disaffection (3 items)
Item Daff^1	How much did you do things other than the tasks at hand?
Item Daff^2	How tired did you feel during the lesson?
Item Daff^3	How boring was the lesson?
5. Help-seeking (2 items)
Item Help^1	How much did you ask for help from the teacher/another adult during the lesson?
Item Help^2	How much did you ask for help from your classmates during the lesson?

Note: The response format for items was 1 = not at all to 5 = very much. Adapted from Vasalampi et al., 2016.

Table 2. Means (M) and standard deviations (SD) for the study variables.

Variable	M (SD)
Overall behavioural engagement	2.10 (0.63)
Overall emotional engagement	1.84 (0.67)
Situational behavioural/cognitive engagement	3.42 (0.82)
Situational emotional engagement	3.65 (0.96)
Situational competence experience	3.91 (0.92)
Situational disaffection	2.73 (0.98)
Situational help-seeking	2.44 (1.22)

Note: The response format for overall engagement was 0 = strongly disagree to 3 = strongly agree and that for situational engagement was 1 = not at all to 5 = very much.

Table 3. Standardised factor loadings and intraclass correlations (ICCs) for the observed variables.

InSitu	Factors
	BEHCOGN	EMO	COMP	DAFF	HELP	ICC
	W/B	W/B	W/B	W/B	W/B
Item BehCogn1	0.58/0.81					0.37
Item BehCogn2	0.67/0.94					0.32
Item BehCogn3	0.57/0.57					0.46
Item BehCogn4	0.47/0.57					0.42
Item BehCogn5	0.62/0.94					0.34
Item BehCogn6	0.62/0.85					0.32
Item BehCogn7	0.51/0.65					0.34
Item Emo1		0.80/0.98				0.34
Item Emo2		0.82/0.99				0.36
Item Emo3		0.75/0.93				0.31
Item Comp1			0.68/0.84			0.34
Item Comp2			0.78/0.94			0.40
Item Daff1				0.47/0.75		0.27
Item Daff2				0.50/0.66		0.35
Item Daff3				0.54/0.92		0.26
Item Help 1					0.63/0.82	0.30
Item Help2					0.69/0.81	0.32

Note: All estimates were significant at the 0.001 level. W = within level, B = between level. BEH/COGN = behavioural and cognitive engagement; EMO = emotional engagement; COMP = competence experience; DAFF = disaffection; HELP = help-seeking.

Table 4. Correlations between factors in the InSitu instrument.

	BEHCOGN	EMO	COMP	DAFF	HELP
BEHCOGN	1.00	0.78***	0.64***	−0.14 ns.	0.40***
EMO	0.82***	1.00	0.65***	−0.41***	0.31***
COMP	0.64***	0.60***	1.00	−0.11 ns.	0.11 ns.
DAFF	- 0.35**	- 0.43***	- 0.15 ns	1.00	0.11 ns.
HELP	0.35***	0.23*	- 0.10 ns.	0.34**	1.00

Notes. *p < 0.05,**p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. BEH/COGN = Behavioural and cognitive engagement; EMO = Emotional engagement; COMP = Competence experience; DAFF = Disaffection; HELP = Help seeking. Correlations above the diagonal are for the within level and below the diagonal are for the between level.

Vasalampi, K., Muotka, J., Pöysä, S., Lerkkanen, M.-K., Poikkeus, A.-M., & Nurmi, J.-E. (2016). Assessment of students’ situation-specific classroom engagement by an InSitu Instrument. Learning and Individual Differences, 52, 46–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2016.10.009

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar