Factorial Validation of a Writing Self-regulation Scale: With and without Acceptably Cross Loading Items

This study explored the factorial validity of a writing self-regulation scale (WSRS) by administering it to 125 learners of English language preparing to sit for the writing module of the IELTS examination in Tehran, Iran. The submission of the written responses elicited on the WSRS to the Principal Axis Factoring and Varimax rotation of the data resulted in extracting five factors, i.e., i.e., Instructions, Editing, Semantic Revision, Accessing Samples, and Syntactic Revision explaining 53% of total variance in the scale. The reliability and correlational analyses showed that not only the WSRS but also its extracted factors were highly reliable and strongly related to each other. The inclusion of positive and acceptably cross loading items (ACLIs) in both the WSRS and factors, however, increased their reliability and inter correlations even higher suggesting that the ACLIs should be reported in factorial studies and included in exploring the inter relationships among the factors. It is suggested that the ACLIs be employed in investigating the relationship of the WSRS with external measures of ability such as scores obtained on language proficiency tests.