Volume_4_Issue_5_Digest

94 TPC D igest Full article and references: Villares, E., Colvin, K., Carey, J., Webb, L., Brigman, G., & Harrington, K. (2014). Convergent and divergent validity of the Student Engagement in School Success Skills Survey. The Professional Counselor , 4 , 541–552. doi:10.15241/ev.4.5.541 The Professional Counselor DIGEST Volume 4, Issue 5 http://tpcjournal.nbcc.org © 2014 NBCC, Inc. and Affiliates continuing to evaluate the psychometric properties of the SESSS lies in the fact that, for school counselors, there has typi- cally been no standardized way to mea- sure these types of outcomes and tie them directly to school counselor interventions. The present article explores the conver- gent and divergent validity of the SESSS. The article builds upon previous research describing the item development of the SESSS and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The current findings con- tribute to the establishment of the SESSS as a valid instrument to measure the impact of school counselor-led interventions on intermediate variables associated with improved student achievement. A total of 4,342 diverse fifth-grade students from two large school districts completed the SESSS; the Motivated Strategies for Learning Ques- tionnaire (MSLQ) Cognitive Strategy Use, Self-Regulation, Self-Efficacy and Test Anxiety subscales; and the Self-Efficacy for Self-Regulated Learning (SESRL). The three subscales of the SESSS (Self- Direction of Learning, Support of Classmates’ Learning and Self-Regulation of Arousal) correlated highly with the MSLQ Cognitive Strategy Use and Self-Regulation subscales, moderately correlated with the Self-Efficacy subscale and the SESRL, and did not correlate with the MSLQ Test Anxiety subscale. Future research is needed to use the SESSS subscales as discriminable dimensions. The SESSS may be used to as a screening tool to identify students in need of school counseling interventions and to evaluate student growth in the academic and behavioral domains. A review of SESSS student data may reveal student needs and lead to decisions about future goals of the school counseling program and discussions with administration and staff about program improvement. Finally, SESSS student data can be used to demonstrate how school counselors can impact student academic and personal/social development related to classroom learning and achievement. SESSS results can be shared with various stakeholders through a variety of formats to document the school counselor’s ability to affect student outcomes most related to parents, administrators and other staff.