Measuring self-regulation to inform interventions: The Icelandic adaptation of the self-regulation subscale (SRS) for higher education students in health sciences

• Self-regulation in learning has a strong relationship to academic success. • The study offers a tool measuring self-regulation describing the adaptation process. • The tool assesses students´ self-regulation skills and informs interventions. Self-regulation is the key to successful learning. It is important to gain students´ level of self-regulation using tools with valid and reliable scores that could provide insights for developing and testing intervention strategies that enhance performance. The purpose was to adapt the eight-item self-regulation scale (SRS), a part of the student perceptions of classroom knowledge-building scale (SPOCK), for Icelandic health sciences students. 234 students in nursing and pharmacy responded to an online survey. Classical test theory (CTT) was applied to examine the reliability and validity of the scores and item response theory (IRT) to conduct an item-level evaluation of the psychometric properties, focusing on item difficulty and item discrimination. Differential item functioning across disciplines were assessed. The findings indicated that the adapted SRS is a robust, internally consistent scale. It demonstrates a strong unidimensional structure with high factor loadings, highly discriminative items, and uses response options that effectively assess self-regulation. The SRS-Icelandic should prove useful in testing interventions developed to increase self-regulation for nursing and pharmacy students. Studies are needed in other fields.