Item Response Theory Analysis of the Classroom Level Adversity Scale

ABSTRACT The Classroom Level Adversity Scale (CLA) captures teachers' perceptions of the overall needs and challenges present in their classrooms. It reflects a collective classroom characteristic based on teacher report, providing insight into the degree of ecological risk teachers perceive when working with their students. The CLA was developed to advance the measurement of teachers' perceptions of classroom stressors and has been used to investigate associations with teacher‐or child‐level outcomes and other classroom related processes. The psychometric properties of the CLA have not been examined. In this study, we evaluate the CLA under an item response theory (IRT) framework. Using a graded response model (GRM) (AIC = 7749.786; BIC = 7015.628), we found the test information curve didn't align to the target information curve, suggesting the scale captures the most precise information about moderately adverse classrooms while the goal would be to capture that of the most severely adverse classrooms. Several items are identified that contribute to this misalignment and revisions are suggested. We conclude that improving the precision of the scale has implications for providing a more useful tool to capture teachers' perspectives on classroom stressors.