Evaluating the Reliability of a Social Presence Composite Construct for Online Computer Science Degree Programmes

Abstract

As a contribution to ongoing discussions about the implications of social presence
for online instruction technology, this study evaluated the reliability and validity
of a composite social presence construct in online computer science programmes
using archival data from the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Center for
Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) Data Buddies Survey. Questions from
the survey were aligned to three interdependent subconstructs of social presence
proposed by Kreijns et al (2021). Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was used
to analyse the relationships between the subconstructs. Cronbach’s alpha was used
to evaluate the internal consistency and reliability of the subconstructs of social
presence, sociability, and social space, as well as the composite construct of social
presence. The findings indicate that the social presence construct and its
subconstructs are internally consistent and highly reliable, aligned with the CERP
survey. Results indicated that the subconstructs are interrelated indicators of the
perception of social presence in online computer science programmes. This study
contributes to the literature concerning measuring social presence in online
learning by providing a reliable and valid construct that can be used to assess the
construct using different permutations of analysis on the CERP dataset.