New exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis insights into the community of inquiry survey

•Factor solution included three factors.•Parallel analysis, employed for the first time, favored three factors over four.•Results did not indicate any substantial refinements to survey items.•Internal consistency level was very high for each section of the survey.•Methodological extension led to an effective comparison with previous studies.

This study has the aim of investigating the factor structure of an adapted version of the Community of Inquiry survey developed by Arbaugh et al. (2008). For this purpose, both exploratory and confirmatory analyses were employed in addition to a parallel analysis using two different samples. The results indicated a three-factor structure as well as high reliability indices for each subpart of the survey. More specifically, the three factors identified appear to correspond to three presences: teaching, cognitive, and social presences. Moreover, results of the study did not reveal any substantial changes that need to be made to any survey items. All these align completely with the theoretical assumptions of the Community of Inquiry Framework (e.g., Garrison & Akyol, 2013a, b), and call for further factor analytic studies on the survey.