So in other words you want to know which are the independent variables X_1 ... X_n such that X_i can be used to explain or even cause School Liking? And you don' t want just a qualitative theory which says why and how the independent variables X_i are potential predictors of School Liking, no, you want indeed measurable variables.

First Approach

This is the traditional statistical way of correlation theory which may lead if successful to some sort of a regression theoretical explanation of School Liking.

Second Approach

However, there is also an alternative approach pioneered by Prof. A. Diamantopoulos: formative indicators (see link below). You might say that it goes the opposite way:

This approach is rather explorative instead of purely statistical, and as such resembles more Factor Analysis (in its original form) than some sort of Prediction Analysis.

Third Approach

There is even a third approach, which is IMHO a kind of mixture of the above approaches. It is the way of UTAUT by Prof. Venkatesh et al. (see attachment; don't be confused by the title of the paper and its domain of application, it can be applied to any more complicated phenomenon, such us School Liking).

In particular, UTAUT assumes that there is not (necessarily) a direct definition of or connection between independent and dependent variables of the concept of School Liking, but that the link between these variables is mediated by a third category of variables called intervening or moderating variables, e.g.: age, sex, and other demographic, psychographic or sociographic variables. What you have to do is to map out all those variables in a network of inner, intervening and outer variables, and it is this network of variables which explains what School Liking is and how it can be measured and predicted in a rather comprehensive way.

Which way do you want to go?

Link:

• https://international-marketing.univie.ac.at/team/adamantios-diamantopoulos/

Attachment:

Great question

School Liking and Avoidance Questionnaire. SLAQ is a child self-report measure composed of 14 questions designed to measure the constructs of 16 school liking and avoidance. Nine items were designed to index school liking and five items were intended to tap school avoidance. School liking questions included ―Is school fun?‖ and ―Are you happy when you’re at school?‖ Questions intended to tap school avoidance included ―Do you wish you didn’t have to go to school?‖ and ―Do you wish you could stay home from school?‖ (See Table 1 for a full list of items). The questionnaire was individually administered to participants at school during the spring semester of each school year. For some items, wordings were altered during later years of data collection to be more appropriate for older students. For example, ―Does school make you feel like crying?‖ and ―Is school yucky?‖ were changed to ―Does school make you feel unhappy or upset‖ and ―Is school terrible?‖, respectively beginning in fourth grade. Items were on a 5-point scale: 1 = almost never, 2 = a little, 3 = sometimes, 4 = a lot and 5 = almost always. All items from kindergarten through third grade were on a 3-point scale but were rescaled to reflect the 5-point scale sued from fourth-sixth grade.1 For the purposes of this study, only spring semesters will be used from kindergarten through sixth to ensure consistency of both measure and time of data collection in the school year. Existing evidence on the SLAQ, gathered with young children, indicates moderate to high levels of internal consistency for items comprising the school liking (alphas = .87-.90) and the school avoidance (alphas = .76-.80) subscales. Moreover, factor analyses conducted with these samples for items from both subscales (14 items) have consistently yielded two subscales; a nine item subscale 17 representing school liking, and a five item subscale representing school avoidance (Ladd et al., 1996).

You can find the items of the questionaire in the link:

with thanks to"Hafidha S. Al-Barashdi"

it seems the SLAQ of Ladd is work ,but maybe its upgrade in 1997 or 2000.

and one thing else is the old version is suited for under 13-14 year old student?