Quantifying fear of failure in STEM: modifying and evaluating the Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory (PFAI) for use with STEM undergraduates

International Journal of STEM Education

Table 4 Fit statistics for nested confirmatory factor models of the PFAI in a STEM context

Model [Result for “good fit”]	AIC [Lower]	RMSEA (90% CI)^c [< 0.06]	CFI [> 0.90]	SRMR [< .08]
Conroy et al. (2002) 5 factors predicting overall FF	Not provided	0.06 (.05–.06)	0.91	0.07
Model A: Fit of Conroy’s 5 factors to undergrad students in STEM	18,802.92	0.151	0.570	0.121
Model B: Fit of modified factors^a to undergrad students in STEM	15,247.87	0.150	0.638	0.112
Model C: Predicting overall FF with modified factors	15,293.97	0.153	0.614	0.120
Model D: Modified model to predict overall FF^b	14,409.09	0.152	0.642	0.116
Model E: Modified model using STEM-specific items	13,965.28	0.150	0.696	0.126

Notes:^a items 1, 2, 3, 9, and 10 dropped in this model; ^b item 12 dropped in this model; ^c because an imputed dataset was used, 90% CI for RMSEA were not computed by the MPlus software. Difference in fit for STEM-specific items was also tested at Models B and C. As fit did not improve significantly, values are not reported here for parsimony.