College Satisfaction Scale (CSS): Evaluation of contextual satisfaction in relation to college student life satisfaction and academic performance

A large number of studies have identified factors that foster or inhibit well-being and academic achievement of college students from the perspective of prevention and quality of life promotion. The aim of the present study was to create and validate a new questionnaire to assess domain-specific satisfaction at University: the College Satisfaction Scale (CSS). It is composed of 20 items to measure 5 dimensions: appropriateness of the student’s choice, quality of the University services, relationships with his/her colleagues, quality of his/her study habits and usefulness for his/her future career. Participants were Italian college students: 88 in the pilot study and 425 in the actual one. Both reliability, assessed with Omega index, and construct validity, estimated through confirmatory factor analysis, were good for all the subscales. The results showed that both average grade scores and academic efficiency were strongly related to satisfaction with the efficiency of studying and slightly related with some of the other subscales.