Establishing longitudinal factorial construct validity of the quality of school life scale for secondary students

The purpose of this study was to establish the longitudinal factorial construct validity of the Quality of School Life (QSL) scale, which was initially designed to measure the well-being of students in Australian high schools. The items comprising the scale were based on theoretical models and existing measurement instruments concerning the domains of schooling and the quality of life experienced by adults. Three latent structure models, two reported earlier in the literature and one new in this context, were reviewed and their merits compared on the basis of two sets of empirical data comprising, respectively, 5932 secondary students in the 1993 cohort and 8269 secondary students in the 1999 cohort using confirmatory factor analysis procedures. Results indicate that there is strong evidence in support of the factorial construct validity of the Quality of School Life scale.