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Validity of the Middle Years Development Instrument for Population Monitoring of Student Wellbeing in Australian School Children

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Abstract

The importance of social and emotional wellbeing has long been recognised by education systems but the measurement of wellbeing still receives far less attention than the measurement of academic achievement. This paper reports on a five-year project to measure student wellbeing across an education system within the state of South Australia using the Middle Years Development Instrument (MDI). All schools (Government, Catholic, and Independent) were invited to participate in the collection at no cost and aggregated school reports provided an incentive to participate. A total of 51,574 students completed the MDI between 2013 and 2015, with higher participation rates in Government schools than Catholic or Independent schools (65%, 18 and 13% respectively in 2015). Validity and reliability analyses confirmed that the MDI scales had good psychometric properties (i.e., favourable model fit in confirmatory factor analyses, high internal consistency, and correlations between scales were consistent with theoretical expectations). Test-retest reliability (based on a sub-sample of 82 children) was acceptable for most scales except for the connectedness to adults at school (r = .50) and friendship intimacy scales (r = .40), where test-retest reliability was low. However, several of the MDI scales had ceiling effects, particularly for girls and younger students (10–11 years old), which may present challenges when using these scales for population monitoring, program and policy evaluations. Pragmatic factors for education systems and governments to consider in selecting social and emotional wellbeing tools are discussed.

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Notes

  1. While many of these countries also participate in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), these assessments involve samples of children rather than the whole population. While this approach can be useful at an education systems level, a census of all children is essential at the school level to get a clear picture of how students’ are faring.

  2. More recently, a Grade 7 version of the MDI has been developed, which includes some additional items and constructs, but this was not available when our study began in 2012.

  3. Table 1 also includes information about the factor loading for each of the MDI items, which are subsequently explained in the statistical analyses and results sections.

  4. Throughout the remainder of this paper, we use the term Aboriginal to refer to the first peoples of Australia, that is, people who identify as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander descent, although it is noted that no one word can sufficiently capture the diversity of Australia’s first people.

  5. The same consent procedures were used in the 2014 and 2015 MDI trials, and the student participation rates and missing data rates were similar to those reported here. As such, these details are not provided in this paper but this information is available from the authors.

  6. A second school completed the retest 9-weeks later for a small number of students (n = 20) but given the longer time period and small numbers we have not included their data in the analyses.

  7. The 2016 Student Wellbeing collection has just been completed. While participation numbers are available the full data set is not yet available for analysis so could not be included in this paper.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Alice Hawkes, Kate Fairweather-Schmidt, Catherine Johnson and Danielle Herreen for their valuable suggestions on earlier drafts of the manuscript. We would also like to thank all of the schools and students who have participated in the Student Wellbeing trial over the past five years in South Australia.

Funding

This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (#LP130100535) to Associate Professor Sally Brinkman (CI-A). Several of the authors (Tess Gregory, David Engelhardt, Martin Guhn, Anne Gadermann, and Kimberly Schonert-Reichl) were also named investigators on the grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Telethon Kids Institute, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

    Tess Gregory & Sally Brinkman

  2. School of Population Health, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

    Tess Gregory & Sally Brinkman

  3. Department for Education and Child Development, Adelaide, Australia

    David Engelhardt, Anna Lewkowicz & Samuel Luddy

  4. The Human Learning Partnership, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Martin Guhn & Anne Gadermann

  5. Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Kimberly Schonert-Reichl

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  1. Tess Gregory
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  2. David Engelhardt
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  3. Anna Lewkowicz
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  4. Samuel Luddy
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  7. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl
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  8. Sally Brinkman
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Correspondence to Tess Gregory.

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Conflict of Interest

License and administration fees are received by the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP), University of British Columbia (UBC), for use of the Middle Years Development Instrument. These fees are assessed using a not-for-profit model whereby monies are returned to HELP, UBC, to assist in the continuing development of the MDI and to support operating costs associated with providing services to MDI partners. The three co-authors affiliated with HELP, UBC, do not receive fees/royalties from the MDI. No other authors have any conflict of interest.

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Gregory, T., Engelhardt, D., Lewkowicz, A. et al. Validity of the Middle Years Development Instrument for Population Monitoring of Student Wellbeing in Australian School Children. Child Ind Res 12, 873–899 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-018-9562-3

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