Developing and Validating the Translanguaging Utility Scale for Navigating International Students’ Academic Success

ABSTRACT On the heels of the multilingual turn, more attention has been paid to the strengths of multilingual students, including translanguaging strategies. While existing empirical research examines student attitudes or intrinsic value, Situated Expectancy‐Value Theory indicates that for a strategy to be sustained and effective, students must also perceive it as having utility value for academic success. A lack of validated instruments to measure this construct hinders the exploration of student translanguaging and its impacts on learning. The aim of this study was to develop and validate the Translanguaging Utility Scale, a tool designed to measure students' perceptions of translanguaging utility. The instrument was validated through a two‐stage process, sequentially utilizing exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis on separate samples from multilingual international students, the largest proportion of whom were from Chinese backgrounds and studying in New Zealand universities ( N = 122, N = 143, respectively). This procedure supported a 12‐item, 3‐factor model representing content, social, and language utility. By distinguishing between perceived utility value and general attitude, this instrument provides a psychometrically sound tool to explore the role of translanguaging. This study provides crucial theoretical and methodological scaffolding for examining how translanguaging functions as a resource for academic engagement and success in higher education.