Strategies for broadening the participation of students in high school Computer Science (CS) are becoming more common, yet evaluating their success and establishing sustainability remain challenging due to the lack of standardized assessment tools. Accurate evaluations of interventions rely on data, which requires asking the right questions and using the appropriate metrics. There are numerous tools available to measure students’ experiences in schools. They are, however, for general education and may not ask “the right questions” to best explore the experience of Computer Science Education. This study addresses the gap by developing and piloting a survey instrument tailored to the CS learning environment. Guided by the Experience lens of the widely-used CAPE framework (including Capacity, Access, Participation, and Experience), we collaborated with educators in a Researcher-Practitioner Partnership to adapt questions from existing surveys. Using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on pilot data, we identified core underlying dimensions and examined internal consistency to check how well the items worked together. The results show five interpretable components that collectively explain over 65% of the variance, suggesting that the survey captures different aspects of student experiences. We offer this tool to support educators and researchers in better understanding and improving students’ experiences in high school CS courses.

Keywords: Student Experience, Researcher Practitioner Partnership, Survey Design, CAPE Framework, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Computer Science Education, Survey, Evaluation, Experience.