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.