Special Education Teacher Contextual Scale (SETCS): The Development and psychometric testing

Abstract

This paper aimed to adapt and validate a special education teacher contextual scale (SETCS) that integrates organizational support, classroom infrastructure, and teachers' professional backgrounds into a unified framework. This study employed a quantitative survey involving a total of 109 special secondary educational teachers in a pilot study and 200 in the research field. Relevant items were adapted and validated with both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). A total of 23 items were removed after testing the content validity, and the three factors were established with 22 items. The CFA demonstrated high reliability, which corroborated the appropriateness of the three-factor measuring model. Specifically, the multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) revealed that the instrument yields similar response patterns, enabling comparisons of scale scores and testing for measurement invariance across different groups.
The results indicated that the SETCS instrument has a sufficient level of reliability, lending scientific validity to the instrument designed to assess the contextual factors of special education teachers.