Naiara Escalante Mateos

Social support has been found to play a key role in certain adolescent school behaviours and it is widely accepted that it fosters school engagement. On the contrary, more recent theoretical contributions regarding the principal sources and types of social support during adolescence suggest that this relationship may vary. To respond to this gap in the research the aim of the present study is to determine the predictive power of social support for school engagement (behavioural, emotional and cognitive) in accordance with the source (family, friends, and teachers) and type (emotional, material and informational) of the support provided to determine the most influential ones and to test through a structural model the combined statistical effect of both perspectives. Participants were 323 compulsory secondary school students from the Basque Autonomous Community, aged between 13 and 18 years (M = 14.41, SD = 1.18), being 40% boys and 60% girls. Participants completed two questionnaires, one measuring perceived social support and one measuring school engagement. The results of the present study show that perceived support from all sources and all types of support predict at least one of the three dimensions of school engagement. The results also indicate that support from teachers and emotional support were the source and type of support (respectively) that most strongly predicted school engagement, whose combined effect has been tested using SEM methodology. These findings may be particularly useful for designing future educational intervention programmes that seek to foster school engagement through social support. For example, intervention designs focusing on encouraging certain changes in teachers’ practice to foster a learning experience based on closer relations characterised by trust and recognition are suggested.

Despite the growing interest in perceived social support as a means of achieving sustainable psychological development and well-being in the various contexts of the adolescent, its definition and composition remain unclear. The aim of this study is to test both the hierarchical order and the types and sources of a theoretical model of the social support perceived by adolescents. The model is based on the theories of Tardy and Lin, as well as on the findings of recent studies on the construct. Three theoretical models are compared using the structural equations method. The participants were 1081 randomly selected secondary school students (aged 12–18 years) from the north of Spain, who completed the APIK Perceived Social Support Questionnaire. The model positing that perceived social support comprises a hierarchical first level formed by sources of support (family, friends and teachers) and a lower second level derived from the first one, formed by types of support (emotional, material and informational), proved to be the first-choice solution. The results establish a solid theoretical base for both future studies on perceived social support during adolescence and possible educational interventions designed to improve social support for teenagers.

Although there is a growing interest in identifying the variables that enhance student school adjustment, there is a lack of understanding of the mechanisms involved in it during adolescence. Despite there being works that confirm the positive relationship between school climate and academic performance, it is still unresolved which of the more specific aspects of climate are linked to this performance, as well as the degree to which an individual variable such as resilience can play a mediating role between both; these unknown factors constitute the objective of this study. A total of 731 students (mean age, M_age = 15.20 years; Standard Deviation, SD = 1.62) from the Basque Country participated; they completed the PACE-33 -school climate scale-, the CD-RISC10 -resilience scale- and the EBAE-10 -perceived academic performance subscale-. The full mediation model and the partial mediation model were tested. The results show that the model of choice is that of partial mediation: the resilience mediates the relationship between two specific aspects of the school climate (peer relationship and teachers’ ability to motivate) and perceived academic performance, and a third specific aspect (teachers’ expectations) has a direct relationship with perceived academic performance. These findings highlight the importance of attending to variables specific to the context in which the subject interacts, with the role of the teacher being especially important, in addition to promoting the development of resilience, due to the weight it has on the perception that students have about their school performance.

The multitude of benefits that a positive school climate brings to the students shows the importance of evaluating this construct appropriately. However, there is still no valid and reliable measure adjusted to the Spanish academic context that evaluates the most relevant aspects of the school climate. To overcome this limitation, the students' perception of school climate scale (PACE-33) was designed, an instrument that evaluates the perceived school climate in adolescent students. The aim of this work is to corroborate the nine-factor structure of the PACE-33 found in the previous exploratory study by means of confirmatory factor analysis, in addition to analyzing its internal consistency reliability. A total of 654 students (M-age = 15,41 years, SD = 1,76) from eight schools in the Basque Country participated in the research. The model of nine correlated factors proposed presents an optimal fit (RMSEA=,035((,031) - (,039)); NNFI =,919; NFI=,956; CFI =,962), as well as appropriate internal consistency reliability indices. In conclusion, the PACE-33 scale allows us to know in a valid and reliable way the perception of the students about the main aspects that favour the school climate in adolescence.

The school climate is one of the keys to the efficiency, quality and improvement of the school. For this reason, numerous studies have highlighted the importance of evaluating this construct. However, there is still no measure in Spanish that evaluates the most relevant aspects of school climate in a valid and reliable way. This paper has two main objectives that try to overcome this limitation: (1) to analyse the internal structure and internal consistency reliability of the Students’ Perception of School Climate scale (escala Percepción del Alumnado sobre el Clima Escolar—PACE-33); and (2) examine its measurement and structural invariance across men and women. This study involved 1180 adolescents (mean age, M_age = 15.37 years; standard deviation, SD = 1.90) selected by means of incidental sampling. The results obtained show that, among the models tested, the one corresponding to nine correlated factors shows the best adjustment to the data; furthermore, they note that it presents adequate internal consistency indices. The results also prove that this model is equivalent in men and women. These data support that the PACE-33 is a valid and reliable measure to assess the adolescents’ perception of the main aspects of the school climate.

Revista Iberoamericana de Psicología y Salud

There have been many different instruments that have been developed in Anglo-Saxon countries in order to evaluate school climate. However, it doesn’t exist yet a widely accepted and validated measurement instrument in Spanish that evaluates in a balanced way, through different dimensions, the main aspects that most researches defend as components of the school climate. With the purpose of overcoming this limitation, the objective of this study is to elaborate a new measurement instrument of the perception of the school climate and to analyze its construct and convergent validity. A total of 480 students from Álava and Madrid of ages between 12 and 18 (M = 14.91, SD= 1.49), take part in the research; 286 (59.6%) of them were women and 194 (40.4%) men. The participants filled in two questionnaires: PACE (school climate) and the version adapted to Spanish of the School Engagement Measure. The analyses carried out allow selecting the most appropriate items for the multidimensional measurement of the school climate. The questionnaire presents adequate internal consistency and external validity. Thus, the new questionnaire gets to surpass the limitation of other measurement instruments created previously and the procedure to be followed in order to continue with its validation is under discussion.

Perceived social support is crucial in the adolescent school behaviour, especially in school engagement. In general, a person's close contexts promote his school engagement, but not all the sources of social support have the same effect. The objectives of this investigation are two: on the one hand (a) analyse the relation between perceived social support and school involvement; and on the other hand (b) identify the variability of perceived social support and school engagement based on sex and parents’ educational level. 323 students of Secondary Education of a high school of Vitoria-Gasteiz aged between 12 to 18 years old (M=14.41; DT=1.18) participated in the study, being 128 of them boys (40%) and 195 girls (60%). The questionnaires APIK (social support) and SEM (school engagement) were used. The obtained results prove that perceived social support correlates with school engagement, being the support from the teachers the one with the highest punctuations. According to the variability based on sex and parents’ educational level of the second objective, there are only differences in perceived social support, being them in favour of women.