Introduction

         Higher education institutions have been demanded to demonstrate their productivities, effectiveness, and efficiencies, reflected for examples from student enrollment trends, student retention and graduation rates, as well as competencies and achievements of graduates, administrators and faculty. Due to scarce resources, student retention especially at the undergraduate level has become an important issue in higher education administrations. A high dropout rate of students especially in the first year could result in great financial loss and a lower graduation rate of the institution (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1980; Pascarella & Chapman, 1983). In the United States, only about half of students, who initially enter engineering majors, actually graduated with an engineering degree (Astin, 1993). Therefore, effective measurements have to be developed and implemented to increase the retention of potential students in higher education institutions (Coll & Stewart, 2008). Studies have shown that, at the institutional level, providing students with an effective academic and non-academic environment could positively encourage students to persist with their studies and at the same time help develop their personalities. Whereas, at the student level, research results have consistently indicated that academic achievement, reflected for example from GPA, and self-regulated learning (SRL) are positively related (Lindner & Harris, 1992; Van Den Hurk, 2006). This is due to the observation that effective self-regulated students know how, when and why they apply certain strategies to deal with their stress and emotions, as well as to improve their understanding, integration, and retention of new information in the learning process (Cross & Steadman, 1996). Students could learn to become self-regulated learners through experience and self-reflection (Pintrich, 1995).

         Self-regulated learning has become an important topic in higher-education research in various countries. It is generally defined as “actions and processes directed at acquiring information or skill that involve agency, purpose, and instrumentality perceptions by learners” (Zimmerman, 1989). Attempt has been made to establish theoretical model to predict academic achievement from students’ self-regulated learning strategies. Studies have shown that self-regulated learning model should consist of two important aspects namely, motivational and learning strategies (Pintrich & DeGroot, 1990; Garcia & Pintrich, 1994); students employ motivational strategies to deal with stress and emotions (Garcia, 1995), whereas learning strategies are used to improve students’ understanding, integration, and retention of new information in the learning process (Cross & Stedman, 1996). In order to assess self-regulated learning, a student self-report instrument, known as the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaires (MSLQ) was developed (Pintrich, Cross, Kozma, & McKeachie, 1986), in which motivational and learning strategies of students are assessed, in connection with the student achivement. MSLQ have been used successfully in various countries (Duncan & McKeachie, 2005)., including for examples Chaina (Rao & Sachs, 1999; Lee, Zhang, & Yin, 2010), New Zealand (Hamilton & Akhter, 2009), and Malaysia (Kosnin, 2007).  

         The objective of the present work is to assess the construct validity of the SRL model, as measured by MSLQ, when applied on engineering students in a science and technology university in Thailand, using descriptive statistics and a second-order confirmatory factor analysis.

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