Observing children's engagement: Examining factorial validity of the inCLASS across demographic groups

A child's unique approach to engaging with other people and learning materials in the classroom shapes their classroom experiences and contributes to their acquisition of skills across academic and social domains. This study examined the comparability of the Individualized Classroom Assessment System (inCLASS), an observation tool that targets individual children's engagement in preschool classrooms with teachers, peers and tasks, within a large diverse sample and across demographic groups (gender, poverty status, ethnicity). The CFA of the hypothesized four-factor model with correlated latent factors suggested good model fit. Criteria for strong measurement invariance were met when making demographic group comparisons (poverty status and ethnicity) with configural invariance found for gender. These findings indicate that the inCLASS maintains similar measurement properties across demographics and lend support for the observation system's utility in assessing individual children's engagement within the early childhood classroom context.