2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Background. Goal congruity in computer science (CS)—the alignment between the types of goals CS affords and the goals students personally endorse—can influence students’ intentions to pursue CS in K–12 classrooms and beyond. However, few instruments exist with evidence of reliability and validity that are designed to assess goal congruity in CS among middle and high school students.

Research Question. Our research question for this study was: What evidence supports the validity and reliability of the CS Goal Affordances and Endorsements scales for use with middle and high school students?

Methodology. We adapted four scales (goal affordances-agentic, goal affordances communal, goal endorsements-agentic, goal endorsements-communal) from a previous study that was not focused on CS. We then conducted a cross-sectional survey using the four adapted scales to examine students’ communal and agentic goal affordances for computer science (CS) and their personal endorsements of communal and agentic goals. Participants (n = 292) were U.S. middle school (n = 154) and high school students (n = 136).

Results. Face validity was generated by critique of the scales by a group of 15 researchers, educators, industry representatives, and non-profit representatives from across the U.S. Evidence of validity based on internal structure was generated via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and measurement invariance testing. The CFA models exhibited good model-data fit, and scalar measurement invariance held for each model across, race/ethnicity, home language, and grade. By gender, scalar invariance held for the CS goal affordances scale and metric for the personal goal endorsements scale. By timepoint, metric held for the CS goal affordances scale and scalar for the personal goal endorsements scale. We found McDonald’s Omega for each of the four subscales to be ω = .76 and above.

Discussion. This goal congruity instrument can be used with confidence by researchers, educators, and evaluators interested in goal congruity within a CS context among students in grades 6-12.