Brief Description

The Student Course Engagement Questionnaire (SCEQ) is a psychometric tool designed to assess the degree of student engagement in specific university courses. It consists of 23 statements and is based on four dimensions of engagement: cognitive (skills), emotional, participatory (participation/interaction), and performance. The authors argue that student engagement is a multidimensional construct directly related to learning and academic achievement.

Purpose

The purpose of the SCEQ is to measure student engagement in specific courses, focusing not only on externally observable behaviors but also on internal attitudes and emotions. The tool is designed for use by educators and researchers to improve teaching quality, identify engagement patterns, and adapt their interventions accordingly.

Scoring Method

The questionnaire consists of 23 statements, and participants are asked to indicate the extent to which each statement represents them within the context of a specific course. The response scale is five-point, from 1 = not at all characteristic to 5 = very characteristic. The statements are distributed across four factors: skills engagement (cognitive strategies such as note-taking and studying), emotional engagement (emotional connection with the course), participation/interaction engagement (class participation and interaction with peers and instructors), and performance engagement (focus on achievement and getting good grades).

Validity

The SCEQ demonstrates strong construct and discriminant validity. Factor analysis revealed four clearly distinct factors. Scores on the individual factors correlate with other theoretical constructs such as Dweck’s learning theory (incremental vs. entity) and learning versus performance goals. Additionally, emotional engagement is positively related to self-perceived engagement and incremental learning theory, while performance engagement is primarily associated with extrinsic goals such as grades.

Reliability

All SCEQ factors showed high internal consistency. Specifically, Cronbach’s alpha was 0.82 for the skills factor, 0.82 for emotional engagement, 0.79 for participatory engagement, and 0.76 for performance engagement. These values confirm the reliability of the questionnaire’s structure.

Data Analysis and Use

Data analysis for the SCEQ includes statistical techniques such as factor analysis and multiple regression. The four engagement dimensions are associated with different types of learning and cognitive outcomes. For example, performance engagement predicted performance in assignments and exams, while participatory engagement was strongly linked to final academic outcomes. The tool is particularly useful in educational interventions, course evaluations, and formative actions aimed at improving teaching quality.

References

Handelsman, M. M., Briggs, W. L., Sullivan, N., & Towler, A. (2005). A measure of college student course engagement. The Journal of Educational Research, 98(3), 184–192. https://doi.org/10.3200/JOER.98.3.184-192