Developing a STEM Transfer-Self Efficacy Survey: Methods of item generation and validation

Research suggests that self-efficacy is a productive lens that can provide potential for better understanding the complicated experience [1] of transferring from two-year colleges (associate-granting institutions) to bachelor’s degree granting institutions. We have begun the development of a survey to measure community college student’s STEM Transfer Self-Efficacy (S-TSE). In this poster we discuss the critical step of developing a new survey; generating items from multiple sources. Our first step of developing items for the S-TSE survey was to adapt existing items from the Laanan-Transfer Students’ Questionnaire developed by Lanaan [2] and refined by Moser [3, 4]. We then generated additional items through reflecting on the first author’s personal transfer experience. We will present a system of lenses used to generate quantitative survey items from previously published qualitative research papers [1, 5]. We will also present analysis of the items generated and discuss the merits of this methodology for generating items.