A Study of the Factorial Invariance of the Student Engagement Instrument (SEI): Results From Middle and High School Students Joseph E. Betts Renaissance Learning and Center for Cultural Diversity & Minority Education, Madison, WI James J. Appleton Gwinnett County Public Schools, Gwinnett, GA Amy L. Reschly University of Georgia Sandra L. Christenson University of Minnesota E. Scott Huebner University of South Carolina The construct of student engagement is increasingly prevalent in the field of education, serving as the foundation of dropout prevention and high school reform initiatives. The purpose of this study was to further examine 1 measure of student engagement, the Student Engagement Instrument (SEI), designed to measure 2 subtypes of student engagement: cognitive and affective. This research extended the initial validation work on the SEI by examining score reliability and factorial invariance across grades and gender. Students (N = 2,416) were sampled from school districts in the rural Southeast and Upper Midwest of the United States. Results indicated similar factor structure, equal score reliability, and similar latent factor relationships across all grades. Evidence supported the contention that the SEI may be used at the middle and high school levels to measure cognitive and affective subtypes of student engagement. Keywords: cognitive engagement, affective engagement, measurement invariance, construct validity Concerns over the ability of the United States to ensure high levels of educational attainment have been around for nearly 2 decades (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1984). Recent international (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2006) and national (Grigg, Donahue, & Dion, 2007) reports have further highlighted these longstanding concerns. Furthermore, the educa- tional playing field is not level for some stu- dents for whom multiple risk factors converge to place them at an increased risk of academic failure (Finn, 1993; National Research Council & Institute of Medicine, 2004; Neild & Balfanz, 2006), which can result in negative personal and societal outcomes (Barton, 2005; Christenson, Sinclair, Lehr, & Hurley, 2000). An important differentiation of risk types separates those related to a student’s status or demographics from those based on student be- haviors (Christenson, 2008; Finn, 1993) and enables interventions targeted at alterable as- pects of student behaviors and perceptions. A focus on the malleable aspects related to risks for academic failure and a grounding in the theories on the relationship between the pro- gression of these alterable risk variables and the negative outcome related to dropping out of school (e.g., Finn, 1989) underlie the study of student engagement (Christenson & Thurlow, Joseph E. Betts, Psychometrics & Assessment Depart- ment, Renaissance Learning, and Research Scientist, Center for Cultural Diversity & Minority Education, Madison, WI; James J. Appleton, Gwinnett County Pub- lic Schools, Department of Research & Evaluation, Gwinnett, GA; Amy L. Reschly, Educational Psychology & Instructional Technology, University of Georgia; San- dra L. Christenson, Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota; E. Scott Huebner, Department of Psychol- ogy, University of South Carolina. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Joseph E. Betts, Psychometrics and Assessments Division, Renaissance Learning, 29 High Point Woods Drive, #102, Madison, WI 53719. E-mail: jbetts5118@aol.com School Psychology Quarterly © 2010 American Psychological Association 2010, Vol. 25, No. 2, 84 –93 1045-3830/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0020259 84