Purpose of Measure: "The present studies aimed to advance the measurement and understanding of microaffirmation kindness cues and assessed how they related to historically underrepresented (HU) and historically overrepresented (HO) undergraduate student persistence in science-related career pathways" (Estrada et al., 2019).
Lay-Person Terms: To assess an individual's experience with micro-affirmations.
Measure:
Take a few minutes about the concept of micro-affirmations, especially as you experience them as a student at (insert appropriate university/institution here). With this in mind, please estimate how often you have experienced the following micro-affirmations over the past month using the following 0 (never) to 6 (always) scale:
| 0. Never | 1. | 2. Weekly | 3. | 4. Daily | 5. | 6. Always | |
| 1. Affirmations that you can complete your degree. | |||||||
| 2. Affirmations that you belong in the institution. | |||||||
| 3. Affirmations that you are a scientist. | |||||||
| 4. Affirmations that people of your gender are important contributors to advancing knowledge. | |||||||
| 5. Affirmations that people of your ethnicity are important contributors to advancing knowledge. | |||||||
| 6. Affirmations that people of your culture are important contributors to advancing knowledge. | |||||||
| 7. Affirmations that people of your sexual orientation are important contributors to advancing knowledge. |
Type of Validity: Dimensionality and parallel analysis. See citation for more details
Citation of Publication:
CBE—Life Sciences Education 2019 18:3Instructions to analyze and interpret: Item 5 was dropped in study following factor loading analysis due to redundancy. See text below (and citation for more details) on factor loadings and analysis: "Taken together, the factor structure and item loadings were largely similar across both HU and HO students and each of the two factors was correlated, providing justification for using direct oblimin rotation. The two-factor structure of the Microaffirmations Scale led us to term the first factor Group Identity microaffirmations, because these items refer to the student’s social identity groups (e.g., “people of your gender,” “people of your culture”). We termed the second factor Individual microaffirmations, because these items were specific to the individual (e.g., “affirmations that you…”). Based on mean item scores, means and standard deviations of the Group Identity microaffirmations factor (which excluded item 5) were as follows: HU M = 3.27, SD = 1.88; HO M = 3.51, SD = 1.93. Means and standard deviations for the Individual microaffirmations factor were as follows: HU M = 3.37, SD = 1.74; HO M = 3.52, SD = 1.63. As indicated by independent-samples t tests, each of these means was not significantly different across groups (p values > 0.199)."
Other citations: N/A