Abstract

School trajectory has been studied from the fulfillment of prescribed itinerary, but the experiences that give rise to these trajectories have been less approached and mainly in a qualitative way. Providing experiences that promote psychological well-being and reduce academic risks (lag, interruption, dropout) is part of a quality education. This study provides psychometric evidence of the validation process of an instrument to measure school experiences in 437 Chilean school students (53.7% women) between 11 and 19 years old. Exploratory, confirmatory and gender invariance factor analyzes support the structure of two independent factors (explained variance, 68,3%), invariant by gender. Internal consistency was acceptable (α=.70). Good experiences correlated positively with positive affectivity (r=.57) and motivation (r=.55), and negatively with negative affectivity (r=-.27), while bad experiences had the opposite effect (r=-.28, r=-.30, r=.39). Differences associated with diverse school contexts were observed in males (F(1,190)=78.106, p=.000) and females (F(1,240)=129.229, p=.000).