Assessing students’ judgments of appropriateness and self-reported practice of school-wide behavioral expectations: initial validation of a student-report measure

Background Within Tier 1 School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), school-wide behavioral expectations are explicitly taught and monitored. Students’ judgments of the appropriateness of expected behaviors and their self-reported typical practice provide complementary perspectives, yet existing assessment tools do not directly pair these perspectives for the same expectations. We therefore developed the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports–Rules, Instruction, Safety, and Emotions (PBIS-RISE) questionnaire, comprising two parallel scales: Positive Behavioral Appropriateness (PBA) and Positive Behavioral Practice (PBP). Methods Participants were 400 fourth- to eighth-grade students (aged 9–17 years) from 23 classes of two schools in Palermo (Italy) not implementing PBIS; classroom teachers rated each student's behavior. Each scale was reduced from 54 to 36 items (72 student-rated items overall) through item reduction in the same sample. Results Confirmatory factor analyses supported a structure with nine behavioral expectations, three school-wide values, and a general factor, with acceptable fit for PBA (CFI = 0.956, TLI = 0.952, RMSEA = 0.046, SRMR = 0.052) and PBP (CFI = 0.954, TLI = 0.950, RMSEA = 0.054, SRMR = 0.048); the three values were very highly correlated ( r = 0.94–0.98), indicating a strong general factor. Subscale reliability ranged from ω = 0.66 to 0.87. Measurement invariance across gender was supported. Cross-form invariance between PBA and PBP was supported when tested with an ordinal procedure, although the joint model showed estimation problems. PBP scores correlated modestly with teacher ratings [ r = 0.23, 95% CI (0.13, 0.32)], to a similar extent as PBA scores. Conclusion The findings provide initial psychometric evidence supporting the PBIS-RISE as a measure of students’ reported appraisal and practice of school-wide behavioral expectations. Because the item structure was derived and evaluated in the same sample from two schools not implementing PBIS, replication in independent samples and in PBIS schools, as well as evidence of sensitivity to intervention, are required before the instrument is used to evaluate Tier 1 instruction or to inform educational decisions.