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Category: Project

Description: Research in educational psychology frequently focuses on the role emotions play in learning and on related antecedents and outcomes. However, studies are often limited to a restricted number of subject domains such as mathematics, languages, or science. As civic education differs in relevant aspects from other educational disciplines (e.g., due to its cross-curricular nature and its tendency to incorporate recent political and social developments), there is a need to develop and validate scales focusing on emotions as they specifically relate to this subject. In the proposed study, we develop and validate self-report scales for three instances of civic education in which emotions likely are elicited: a class-related emotions scale, a (cross-curricular) political discussion-related emotions scale, and an epistemic emotions scale focusing on emotions experienced during processing of political information. Additionally, political topic emotions are assessed using single-item emotions scales. The objective is to analyse the internal and external validity of the scales, thereby asking whether the internal structure of discrete emotions can be shown by the data, and measurement invariance is provided. In terms of external validity, the study asks whether discrete emotions are related to antecedents and effects of emotions as proposed by the control-value theory. As antecedents, measures on control- and value-appraisals (e.g., domain specific self-concept, internal political efficacy, personal importance) were adapted to fit to the civic education context. As measures for outcomes of emotions, students' extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, engagement with politics, school grade in civic education, and achievement on a political knowledge quiz are used. All scales will be validated using data (expected N = 500) from students of part-time vocational schools (class-related emotions) and full-time vocational and non-vocational schools of the academic track (discussion-related emotions) at grade 10 to 13 in Austria. Data collection is planned for April to May 2021 using online-questionnaires which are shared with students via schools. Schools are sampled with a stratified random samples, stratified to region and school type. Confirmatory factor analysis will be used to assess the internal validity of the scales. For external validity, bivariate correlation analysis and structural equation models for latent correlations will be used in order to test relationships to antecedents and effects of emotions.