Investigating the Initial Psychometric Properties of Brunei Darussalam's Teacher Rating Scale for Identifying Gifted Students

Validity and reliability are psychometric elements indicating an instrument’s effectiveness at being able to measure what it purports to measure and its stability across different settings and populations. Brunei Darussalam’s Teacher Referral Form (TRF), an adapted checklist, was examined to determine whether the items reflect Brunei’s definition of gifted and talented, if the hypothesized factor structure of the original checklist is empirically valid, whether the TRF exhibited sufficient internal consistency across its items, and if the pattern of factor convergence could explain the observed outcomes. An analysis of the TRF for its content-related validity, a factor analysis of teachers’ ratings on students using the TRF, and an estimate of the TRF’s reliability were used to answer those questions. The analyses indicated that the TRF and accompanying data did not provide evidence that the items in the checklist reflect Brunei’s definition and the hypothesized factor structure was not verified by the existing data, suggesting that the TRF has weak psychometric properties.