Measuring student feedback literacy in three languages
Feedback only helps students who engage with it. Feedback literacy describes the attitudes and practices that make this engagement possible, and research on it needs a sound way to measure it.
What we did
Building on our initial scale (Woitt et al.), we refined the Student Feedback Literacy Instrument so that its facets are represented more evenly. The result has 22 items on two dimensions: feedback attitudes (8 items) and feedback practices (14 items). We also derived a short form, the SFLI-S, with 11 items.
We tested both versions in four student samples with 1,424 students in total: two German samples, one English and one Turkish.
What we found
Confirmatory factor analyses supported the two-factor structure in all three languages, for the full and the short version. Feedback literacy, in this model, has an attitudinal and a behavioural component.
The instrument also relates to other constructs as expected. Feedback literacy was positively associated with need for cognition, perseverance and deep motivation, negatively with surface motivation, and most strongly with feedback self-efficacy.
How you can use it
The SFLI is free to use in teaching and research. The short form takes about half the items and keeps the two dimensions, which makes it easy to include in larger studies. The English and Turkish versions needed small modifications, so cross-language comparisons deserve some care.
All versions of the instrument are available on the SFLI page.
Weidlich, J., Jivet, I., Woitt, S., Orhan Göksün, D., Kraus, J., & Drachsler, H. (2025). The student feedback literacy instrument (SFLI): Multilingual validation and introduction of a short-form version. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2025.2451729