The concerns about inclusive education scale: dimensionality, factor structure, and development of a short-form version (CIES-SF)

Teachers play a vital role in the implementation of inclusive education, and understanding where they have worries is essential to researchers and policymakers likewise. The Concerns about Inclusive Education Scale (CIES) is a frequently used scale globally to examine teachers’ concerns but yielded mixed results regarding its factor structure. Using a large teacher sample (N₁ = 538), we analyzed its factor structure and made modifications informed by our analysis. Results favored a recently proposed factor solution over the original one. Based on this solution, a short form was created, which reduces the CIES length by 42%. It demonstrated excellent model fit in an additional validation sample (N₂ = 537), and efficiently and comprehensively assesses teacher concerns about inclusive education.