Assessing feedback practices in higher education: Development and validation of the Perceived Quality of Feedback Scale

Despite the importance of feedback quality in educational contexts, the availability of comprehensive, valid, and reliable tools for assessing feedback quality remains limited. The objective of this study was to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool for evaluating the perceived quality of feedback in a comprehensive manner. The study was conducted with the participation of 847 pre-service teachers from a range of grade levels and teacher education programmes (322 second-year, 272 third-year, 253 fourth-year; 52.18% female, 47.82% male) studying at a public university's Faculty of Education. Participants were selected from various teaching programs. The scale was developed in three stages: item development, scale development, and scale evaluation. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed to examine the factor structure of the assessment tool. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted with data collected from 531 undergraduate students, followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with data from another group of 316 undergraduate students. The EFA results revealed a five-factor structure consistent with the theoretical framework: cognitive orientation, metacognitive orientation, affective orientation, quality of presentation, and quality of content. These five factors explained 52.53% of the total variance. The CFA demonstrated that the model's fit indices exceeded the acceptable thresholds (CFI=.95, RMSEA=.05, TLI=.94). The reliability analyses showed that the Cronbach's Alpha (.78 - .93) and McDonald's Omega (.77 - .93) coefficients for the scale dimensions were within acceptable ranges, confirming the scale's reliability. Consequently, a valid and reliable 25-item scale with five dimensions was developed to measure the perceived quality of feedback.