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ERIC Number: EJ1278367
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Dec
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-2159-2020
EISSN: N/A
Refinement and Psychometric Evaluation of the Executive Skills Questionnaire--Revised
Strait, Julia Englund; Dawson, Peg; Walther, Christine A. P.; Strait, Gerald Gill; Barton, Amy K.; Brunson McClain, Maryellen
Contemporary School Psychology, v24 n4 p378-388 Dec 2020
Executive functioning (EF) skills are vital for academic success. Along with the recent explosion of interventions targeting these skills comes the need for affordable, efficient, and ecologically valid measures for planning and tailoring interventions and monitoring outcomes. The current study describes the refinement and initial psychometric evaluation of the Executive Skills "Questionnaire-Revised (ESQ-R)," a self-report EF rating scale that integrates current scientific understanding of core EF processes with an ecologically valid understanding of EF skills (ESs) that is directly applicable to academic contexts and tasks and tied to available interventions. We describe reduction of an initial 61-item pool to a final 25-item version using a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with 347 participants. Psychometric evidence for the 25-item version is promising, with excellent internal consistency (alpha = 0.91), adequate test-retest reliability for a small subsample (0.70 with no effects of time delay on score variability), moderate correlations with other EF rating scales (0.56-0.74) and psychological symptom scales (0.380-0.55), and a significant correlation with academic engagement (- 0.40). Executive functioning (EF) is one of the most important constructs in understanding individuals' academic performance. Executive functions (EFs) are a group of higher-level cognitive functions that allow individuals to initiate, maintain, monitor, adjust, and complete goal-directed actions (Dawson and Guare 2010; Dempster 1992; Lezak 1995; Miyake et al. 2000). Major EFs identified from cognitive research include working memory (the ability to mentally hold and manipulate information, often while performing another task and/or dealing with distractions), inhibition (the ability to suppress prepotent responses), and mental flexibility (the ability to switch between tasks or rules or sets; Chan et al. 2008; Diamond 2014; Engle 2002; Miyake et al. 2000; Miyake and Friedman 2012). These core functions facilitate higher-level processes such as problem-solving, reasoning, and decision-making (Collins et al. 2012; Lunt et al. 2012) and predict academic performance in students from PreK to college (Baars et al. 2015; Best et al. 2011). In college students, for example, EF predicts academic performance above and beyond high school grades and standardized test scores (Crede and Kuncel 2008). EF deficits are also correlated with symptoms and behaviors that negatively impact academic performance, such as anxiety, stress, depression, adjustment problems, and procrastination (Petersen et al. 2006; Rabin et al. 2011; Wingo et al. 2013). The robust relation between EF and academic success has triggered a recent proliferation of promising interventions (e.g., executive coaching; Dawson and Guare 2012) designed to improve students' EF skills. However, it is unclear how to best plan, tailor, and measure the effectiveness of these interventions.
Springer. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail: customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2123/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A