A multilevel examination of an instrument measuring school renewal via teachers

The purpose of the present study was to assess an instrument that uses responses from teachers to measure principal behaviors on the critical educational issue of school renewal. To account for the data hierarchy of teachers nested within schools, we employed a multilevel confirmatory factor analysis and estimated multilevel reliabilities at both teacher and school levels to examine the instrument. With 2765 teachers from 148 schools, the instrument showed acceptable structural validity. Specifically, we found that when teachers provide responses as indicators of school renewal, the instrument can generate a valid and highly reliable measure or estimate of school renewal at the school level. However, data analysis at the teacher level attempting to use teacher perceptions of school renewal as either dependent variables or independent variables should be avoided because of the low reliability at the teacher level.