Middle school student attitudes toward science, and their relationships with instructional practices: a survey of Chinese students’ preferred versus actual instruction

Asia-Pacific Science Education

Table 2 Model fit statistics for the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models (N = 1299)

Model	k	CFI	RMSEA (C.I.)	SRMR	χ²	df	AICc	BIC
Model 1b: Unidimensional	131	.574	.105 (.103, .106)	.103	20,603.86	1354	173,159	173,807
Model 2b: First-Order Factors	152	.877	.057 (.055, .058)	.079	6911.20	1333	159,519	160,265
Model 3b: Second-Order Factors	140	.857	.061 (.060, .062)	.091	7807.02	1345	160,385	161,074
Model 4: bifactor unlinked	169	.752	.081 (.080, .082)	.049	12,538.34	1316	165,191	166,014

“Linked” versions of models 1–3 have the same structure but include error covariance terms for the parallel Actual and Preferred items linked. k: number of parameters estimated
Abbreviations: CFI Comparative fit index, RMSEA (CI) Root mean square error of approximation with 95% confidence interval in parentheses, SRMR Standardized root mean-square residual, AICc Corrected Akaike’s information criterion, BIC Bayesian information criterion