Can We Compare Attitude Scores among Diverse Populations? An Exploration of Measurement Invariance Testing to Support Valid Comparisons between Black Female Students and Their Peers in an Organic Chemistry Course

Chemistry education research has sought to understand why students struggle in organic chemistry courses. Beyond the volume and difficulty of the material taught in this course, there are also affective factors, such as attitude toward chemistry, that can influence how students perform. Studies have documented cases in which students of underrepresented minority backgrounds in science fields have less positive attitudes than their majority peers. Thus, in this study, we investigated whether the significant positive attitude gains found in a flipped classroom compared to a traditional lecture course extended to the Black female students in the sample when compared to the rest of their peers. Our study employs measurement invariance testing, which reveals whether an instrument's internal structure holds for different groups, to support valid comparisons. The study documents that Black female students began the course with lower attitude scores than their peers. Results of this study indicate that, while Black female students experience similar attitude gains to the rest of their peers in the flipped classroom, initial attitude differences are not completely erased by this single experience. Our study also uses structural equation modeling to describe the relationship between attitude and achievement in this flipped organic chemistry classroom. The attitude- achievement relationship was successfully modeled by a reciprocal causation framework in which emotional satisfaction had a small but significant and positive relationship with subsequent achievement measures. In light of the observed relationship between attitude and achievement, this finding suggests that continued research into both attitudinal and achievement factors for students from populations underrepresented in the sciences is warranted.