New exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis insights into the community of inquiry survey

摘要

This study has the aim of investigating the factor structure of an adapted version of the Community of Inquiry survey developed by Arbaugh et al. (2008). For this purpose, both exploratory and confirmatory analyses were employed in addition to a parallel analysis using two different samples. The results indicated a three-factor structure as well as high reliability indices for each subpart of the survey. More specifically, the three factors identified appear to correspond to three presences: teaching, cognitive, and social presences. Moreover, results of the study did not reveal any substantial changes that need to be made to any survey items. All these align completely with the theoretical assumptions of the Community of Inquiry Framework (e.g., Garrison & Akyol, 2013a, b), and call for further factor analytic studies on the survey.