The Inventory of Teacher-Student Relationships: Factor structure and associations with school engagement among high-risk youth

Teacher-student relationships have been studied with increasing intensity during the past three decades, but the majority of this study has focused on young children and has relied on teacher perceptions of these relationships. The current study was designed to add to this growing body of research by exploring the factor structure, reliability, and validity of an instrument designed to measure adolescents' perceptions of their own relationships with teachers. Participants included 687 high school students, half of whom were students with diagnosed disabilities and the other half were students considered at risk of academic failure due to placement in dropout retrieval programs. All youth completed a self-report instrument of teacher-student relationships along with multidimensional measures of school engagement. Findings from a confirmatory factor analysis of the Inventory of Teacher-Student Relationships indicated that the three hypothesized factors (i.e., Communication, Trust, and Alienation) had robust factor loadings, adequate internal consistency, and were associated with multiple measures of school engagement. These findings align with previous research linking teacher-student relationships with school engagement and support the need for continued research on the importance of teacher-student relationships among adolescents who are at-risk of experiencing difficulties in school.