Investigating the construct validity of scores from a measure of student perceptions about mathematics classroom activities using multidimensional scaling

Interest in student affective and motivational perceptions about learning mathematics is growing. An instrument, the Mathematics Assessment Questionnaire, has been developed for use by classroom teachers to assess these perceptions. Research suggests that teachers and students characterize classrooms by activity settings, and items in the Mathematics Assessment Questionnaire use one of three activities: teacher whole-class instruction, student problem-solving groups, and homework. The present study explores the construct validity of scores of 1,505 junior high school students using three-way multidimensional scaling analyses. Findings are generally supportive of validity. Implications of findings are discussed.