The children's interpersonal mattering at school scale: a psychometric exploration
Date
2025
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This dissertation contributes to the conceptual framework of mattering, a social-psychological construct reflecting one’s sense significance to others, by empirically demonstrating whether it can be quantitatively assessed in elementary school children. Despite mattering’s essential role in shaping social, emotional, and mental wellbeing, no validated scales exist for children. This dissertation addresses this gap by centering public school elementary students (in Grades 3-5) and ensuring the applicability of the Children’s Interpersonal Mattering at School Scale. For this dissertation, I developed the Children’s Interpersonal Mattering at School Scale, which contains subscales assessing Mattering to Teachers and Mattering to Friends. I piloted the scale with 447 elementary school students across four public schools (38% third graders, 32% fourth graders, 30% fifth graders). Analyses combined Rasch modeling (to evaluate structural validity) and structural equation modeling (SEM; to test convergent validity). The Rasch modeling results demonstrated strong psychometric properties, which confirms that the scale’s internal structure aligns with mattering’s conceptual framework. The SEM results further supported the measure’s validity, with subscales correlating significantly with self-esteem. This dissertation makes significant contributions to the field. First, it establishes mattering as a measurable and developmentally relevant construct for elementary students, extending its conceptual framework beyond adolescent and adult populations. It also provides education stakeholders, such as researchers, with a scale to assess students’ sense of mattering to specific people in their school environment.
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Keywords
Elementary school, Mattering scale, School environment, Elementary students, Psychometric exploration