Adaptation and validation of the Course Experience Questionnaire in the context of post‐secondary education in Hong Kong
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09684881111107753 |
| Pages | 50-66 |
| Date | 01 February 2011 |
| Published date | 01 February 2011 |
| Author | Dennis C.S. Law,Jan H.F. Meyer |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Adaptation and validation of the
Course Experience Questionnaire
in the context of post-secondary
education in Hong Kong
Dennis C.S. Law
Caritas Francis Hsu College, Hong Kong, China, and
Jan H.F. Meyer
School of Education, University of Durham, Durham, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) is a quantitative instrument for collecting
student feedback on programme quality that has been tested and practically used in Western
university response-contexts. The purpose of this paper is to adapt and partially validate a Chinese
translation of the CEQ, for application in the new context of post-secondary education in Hong
Kong.
Design/methodology/approach – From a population of about 2,515 students in six institutions,
1,572 responses were obtained, representing a response rate of 62.5 percent. Given that a Chinese CEQ
has never been tested in this new context, an exploratory approach was adopted by examining the
psychometric properties of the CEQ constituent scales and their underlying factor structure as
exhibited via item-correlation analysis and exploratory factor analysis.
Findings – The alpha values of the CEQ scales in the present study are generally lower than those of
the other reported studies. The results of exploratory factor analysis indicate that the degree of overlap
among the constructs as measured by the CEQ scales is more extensive than most other reported
studies, resulting in only four factors being explicitly indicated, with some constructs being
overshadowed by other more salient constructs and failing to exhibit in the factor structure.
Practical implications – While broadly supporting the potential of CEQ-type surveys in informing
the quality endeavour, the findings of the present study (and those of some related tests on Chinese
students that have recently been reported) suggest the need for further development of the CEQ for
application in the Chinese context in general, and the context of Hong Kong post-secondary education
in particular.
Originality/value – The paper cross-validates the CEQ in a new context.
Keywords Training evaluation,Questionnaires, China, Furthereducation, Quality
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The post-secondary education of many countries and cities has been undergoing
fundamental reforms, especially in recent years, to respond to the trend of globalisation
and to meet the expectations of the respective communities in their development into
knowledge-based societies. In Hong Kong, the recent education reform has resulted in a
rapid expansion of post-secondary education (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2006 ),
rendering it necessary to address concerns about the educational quality of academic
provisions in this sector and whether quality has been sacrificed for quantity.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0968-4883.htm
QAE
19,1
50
Received December 2009
Revised August 2010
Accepted October 2010
Quality Assurance in Education
Vol. 19 No. 1, 2011
pp. 50-66
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0968-4883
DOI 10.1108/09684881111107753
One well-established methodology for addressing issues of educational quality lies
in the development of appropriate quantitative instruments, such as inventories or
questionnaires, for investigating different aspects of student learning to provide
empirical evidence that can inform the quality endeavour (Leckey and Neill, 2001). The
so-called two-step approach for such a development (Lonka et al., 2004, p. 305), through
which a quantitative instrument is derived from the psychometric operationalisation of
qualitative analysis results obtained in the original response-context, is rigorous but
typically takes a long time (e.g. Vermunt, 1996, 1998). An alternative approach, in
which existing quantitative instruments developed and validated in other contexts are
adapted for application in the (new) target response-context, is therefore worth
exploring. However, this approach needs to re-establish the psychometric properties of
the adapted instrument in the target response-context (Richardson, 2004, p. 353), as
some constructs embedded in the domain of the original instrument may be
context-dependent. Such dependency requires further psychometric attention in the
new response-context.
The present study adopts the abovementioned alternative approach, with a focus on
the collection of student feedback (Harvey, 2003) on their perceptions of the learning
environment. Students’ perceptions of the learning environment such as curriculum,
teaching and assessment are commonly recognized as affecting students’ learning
approaches and the quality of students’ learning outcomes (Marton and Sa
¨ljo
¨, 1976a, b),
especially in Western contexts. For example, research findings indicate that students
tend more to adopt surface approaches to learning with intention to role-learn the
materials when workload is perceived as heavy and assessment as encourag ing
content reproduction. Students tend more to adopt deep approaches to learning with
intention to understand the materials when teaching is perceived as good, learning
goals as clear, and students’ independence in learning as being encou raged. Research
findings also typically show that deep approaches are positively and surface
approaches are negatively related to students’ academic achievement, although the
correlations are often rather weak (Diseth et al., 2006, p. 158), partly due to the lack of
desirable ways to measure such achievement (Knight, 2002). It is worth mentioning
that the demarcation between surface and deep approaches to learning for Chinese
students is not as clear as that for their Western counterparts, mainly due to the fact
that Chinese students have a more complex concept of memorisation that may be
associated with different forms of understanding, resulting in the so-called apparent
Paradox of the Chinese Learner (Marton et al., 1996), a phenomenon which has puzzled
many Western researchers in the past. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the
relationships between Hong Kong students’ approaches to learning and their
perceptions of the learning environment are similar to those reported in Western
studies (e.g. Watkins, 2001). In the light of these previous results, and what has been
practicing in many Western contexts, the development of instruments for collecting
credible data on students’ perceptions of the learning environment in the Hong Kong
context is important for the quality endeavour. Through these instruments
post-secondary education institutions can identify aspects of their study
programmes that may be improved in order to induce students’ adoption of more
desirable approaches to learning and students’ achievement of better academic results.
The Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) is one such instrument that is tested
and practically used in Western university contexts. For example, in Australia
The Course
Experience
Questionnaire
51
To continue reading
Request your trial