Development and evaluation of a Chinese version of the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI)

Abstract

Teacher–student interpersonal relationships play an important role in education. The Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) was designed to measure students’ interpersonal perceptions of their teachers. There are two Chinese versions of the QTI for student use, and that inherited the weaknesses of the previous English versions, such as items that focus on class behaviour, instead of teacher behaviour, or that include conditionals and negations. The present study aimed to develop an improved Chinese version of the QTI which is conceptually parallel with the original QTI and with the use of optimal item wording. The process contained several steps, including expert panels and student and teacher interviews. New items were also created based on the Chinese secondary classroom context, rather than only using translations of English items. The final version of the Chinese version of the QTI presented in this paper was evaluated with a sample of 2000 students from 4 secondary schools in mainland China who rated a total of 80 teachers. The resulting version of the Chinese QTI had adequate validity and reliability, and it distinguished clearly between teachers. The predictive validity was supported by the relation between the students’ perceptions of their teachers and their academic emotions in class. Although further improvement of the instrument is recommended, it can be used to study interpersonal teacher behaviour in China and to help to improve Chinese teachers’ teaching practices.