Measuring Positive Development among College Students in the United States: Investigating Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Measurement Invariance across Different Racial Groups

Abstract

Measures that are applicable to assess the positive youth development (PYD) of racially diverse college students are needed. The present study tested if a revised version of the very short form of the PYD measure (PYD-VSF) was applicable to college students from five racial groups in the U. S. (White, Black, Latinx, Asian, and other) across three measurement occasions. Participants were 5,735 college students who completed the PYD-VSF at least once across the three waves of a longitudinal study. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) indicated that a first-order Five Cs structure, a higher-order structure, and a bifactor structure all provided good fit to the data. Multi-group CFA across racial groups found that the first-order structure fit the data better than the higher-order and the bifactor models, and it showed configural-, factor loading-, intercept-, and residual-invariance. Longitudinal CFA models of the first-order structure supported configural-, factor loading-, intercept-, and residual-invariance. The revised PYD-VSF measure has shown the potential to assess PYD among college students of diverse racial-ethnic backgrounds.

Acknowledgments

We extend our gratitude to Dr. Richard M. Lerner for his review and feedback during the preparation and revision of this paper. We also thank the research team for hard work on conducting the project.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the PI of the YES project: Dr. Richard M. Lerner ([email protected]), upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported in part by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (21148) to Dr. Richard M. Lerner.