Development of scales to measure perceived physical education class climate: a cross-national project

Motivational research in the classroom has adopted a social cognitive perspective but has mainly been restricted to the study of individual achievement cognitions. In addition to this, there is a need to study and assess the perception children have of the class climate. Using social cognitive theory as a base, this research reports the development of class climate scales in French and English for use in physical education classes. Psychometric development with the French scale was shown to be satisfactory, including adequate factorial structure assessed by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and good internal and test-retest reliability. A parallel English scale demonstrated a less adequate fit to the proposed model when using CFA, but shortened scales assessing just mastery and performance dimensions of climate were shown to predict important motivational measures in a structural equation modelling analysis.