Student ratings of the importance of survey items, multiplicative factor analysis, and the validity of the community of inquiry survey

This research builds upon prior validation studies of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) survey by utilizing multiple rating measures to validate the survey's tripartite structure (teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence). In prior studies exploring the construct validity of these 3 subscales, only respondents' course ratings were utilized. This study asked participants to additionally rate the importance of each CoI survey item. Descriptive analyses of the gaps between course rating scores and the respective item-importance ratings revealed that social presence items, perceived as the least important of the CoI subscales, yielded the gap scores with least variability, while gaps in teaching presence items revealed areas where instructors might focus more attention. Multiplicative scores for each item were computed as the product of an item's course rating score and its corresponding importance rating. Even when including this additional measure of perceived importance, factor analysis of multiplicative scores (item rating ⁎ importance rating) supported the CoI model's tripartite structure, and so prior validation studies.