R ESEARCH A RTICLE Does the School Performance Variable Used in the International Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) Study Reflect Students’ School Grades? ROSEMARIE FELDER-PUIG, DSc, MSc a ROBERT GRIEBLER, MA b ODDRUN SAMDAL, PhD c MATTHEW A. KING, BA d JOHN FREEMAN, PhD e WOLFGANG DUER, MA, PhD f ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Given the pressure that educators and policy makers are under to achieve academic standards for students, understanding the relationship of academic success to various aspects of health is important. The international Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) questionnaire, being used in 41 countries with different school and grading systems, has contained an item assessing perceived school performance (PSP) since 1986. Whereas the test-retest reliability of this item has been reported previously, we determined its convergent and discriminant validity. METHODS: This cross-sectional study used anonymous self-report data from Austrian (N = 266), Norwegian (N = 240), and Canadian (N = 9,717) samples. Students were between 10 and 17 years old. PSP responses were compared to the self-reported average school grades in 6 subjects (Austria) or 8 subjects (Norway), respectively, or to a general, 5-category-based appraisal of most recent school grades (Canada). RESULTS: Correlations between PSP and self-reported average school grade scores were between 0.51 and 0.65, representing large effect sizes. Differences between the median school grades in the 4 categories of the PSP item were statistically significant in all 3 samples. The PSP item showed predominantly small associations with some randomly selected HBSC items or scales designed to measure different concepts. CONCLUSIONS: The PSP item seems to be a valid and useful question that can distinguish groups of respondents that get good grades at school from those that do not. The meaning of PSP may be context-specific and may have different connotations across student populations from different countries with different school systems. Keywords: school performance; academic achievement; children; adolescents; HBSC; health; validation. Citation: Felder-Puig R, Griebler R, Samdal O, King MA, Freeman J, Duer W. Does the school performance variable used in the international Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) study reflect students’ school grades? J Sch Health. 2012; 82: 404-409. Received on April 13, 2011 Accepted on December 22, 2011 T he Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) study is an international collaboration of research teams across Europe and North America that investigate children’s and adolescents’ health and its associated factors. It started in 1983 with 5 countries; currently, 41 participating countries provide data on a Key Researcher, (rosemarie.felder-puig@lbihpr.lbg.ac.at), Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Health Promotion Research, Untere Donaustr. 47, Vienna A-1020, Austria. b Senior Researcher, (robert.griebler@lbihpr.lbg.ac.at), Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Health Promotion Research, Untere Donaustr. 47, A-1190 Vienna, Austria. c Professor (oddrun.samdal@psyhp.uib.no), Department of Health Promotion and Development, University of Bergen, Christiesgate 13, Bergen N-5020, Norway. d Project Manager (matt.king@queensu.ca), Social Program Evaluation Group, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7M 5R7, Canada. e Associate Professor (freemanj@queensu.ca), Faculty of Education, Queen’s University, 511 Union Street, Kingston, ON K7M 5R7, ON, Canada. f Associate Professor (wolfgang.duer@lbihpr.lbg.ac.at), Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Health Promotion Research, Untere Donaustr. 47, A-1190 Vienna, Austria. Address correspondence to: Rosemarie Felder-Puig, Key Researcher, (rosemarie.felder-puig@lbihpr.lbg.ac.at), Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Health Promotion Research, Untere Donaustr. 47, Vienna A-1020, Austria. more than 200,000 children and adolescents. The United States has participated in the study since 1997. The last decade has seen increased dissemination to policy makers and evidence that scientific information arising from this study has influenced health initiatives and health improvement programs. 1 Apart from 404 • Journal of School Health • September 2012, Vol. 82, No. 9 •  2012, American School Health Association