Temporal Stability

Abstract

One way to estimate reliability, specifically the temporal stability, of FSSE results is by an institution-level correlation analysis. Assuming no major shifts in an institution’s policies, we would expect an institution to have relatively similar FSSE scale scores from one year to the next. It is possible that results for a given institution may vary substantially from one administration to another—this is more likely to occur for schools that have a small number of respondents. Gradual changes over longer periods of time are much more likely, and should not be interpreted as unreliability. Overall, however, we would expect the correlation between institutions’ scale scores from year to year to be relatively high.