Measuring university students’ interest in biology: evaluation of an instrument targeting Hidi and Renninger’s individual interest

International Journal of STEM Education

Table 5 Test of measurement invariance of the interest instrument across biology majors (n = 222) and non-biology majors (n = 489)

	χ²	df	CFI	ΔCFI	RMSEA [90% CI]	SRMR
Single model biology majors	259	167	0.972		0.054 [0.041–0.066]	0.042
Single model non-biology majors	435	167	0.962		0.065 [0.058–0.073]	0.038
Configural	703	334	0.965		0.062 [0.056–0.068]	0.039
Metric	739	351	0.964	0.001	0.061 [0.055–0.068]	0.050
Factor covariance	750	354	0.963	0.001	0.062 [0.056–0.068]	0.082
Scalar	804	368	0.959	0.005	0.063 [0.057–0.069]	0.050

MLR χ2 chi-squared value for maximum likelihood estimation with robust standard errors, df degrees of freedom, CFI comparative fit index, RMSEA root mean squared error of approximation, SRMR standardized root-mean squared residual, CI confidence interval
p < .001 for all models