Developing a Scale to Measure Students’ Attitudes toward Science

Abstract

The aim of this study is to develop a science attitude scale (SAS). For that purpose, the literature review has been done for suggestions for creating scales and a new draft scale developed. The draft scale was analyzed by specialists and a pilot study is done after its approval by experts. The SAS is prepared with 21 items and among these, 11 items are reverse-coded. The SAS consists of Likert-type items. The sample of the study consists of 154 college students studying at the Faculty of Education, Elementary Science Education, and Elementary Education departments. Principal axis factoring with orthogonal rotation (varimax) was used for exploratory factor analysis. Factor eigenvalues were checked with respect to parallel analysis and numbers of the factors were determined with respect to the analysis. Items that did not serve the purpose of the scale were omitted from the SAS. The finalized SAS’ Cronbach alpha value is .953. For confirmatory factor analysis data were collected from a different sample which consists of university students who were studying at elementary science education, elementary education, and electric electronic engineering departments. Number of sample is 201. Confirmatory factor analyses run through Amos 24.0 software. It is believed that SAS is a valuable contribution to the science education field since it has unidimensional structure and proved its item discrimination power, and alongside with an excellent internal consistency. SAS also offers opportunity to develop multidimensional science attitude scale. For that purpose, original SAS and English version of it are provided in appendixes.

Keywords

• science attitude
• scale
• scale development
• science

Developing a Scale to Measure Students’ Attitudes toward Science

Öz

The aim of this study is to develop a science attitude scale (SAS). For that purpose, the literature review has been done for suggestions for creating scales and a new draft scale developed. The draft scale was analyzed by specialists and a pilot study is done after its approval by experts. The SAS is prepared with 21 items and among these, 11 items are reverse-coded. The SAS consists of Likert-type items. The sample of the study consists of 154 college students studying at the Faculty of Education, Elementary Science Education, and Elementary Education departments. Principal axis factoring with orthogonal rotation (varimax) was used for exploratory factor analysis. Factor eigenvalues were checked with respect to parallel analysis and numbers of the factors were determined with respect to the analysis. Items that did not serve the purpose of the scale were omitted from the SAS. The finalized SAS’ Cronbach alpha value is .953. For confirmatory factor analysis data were collected from a different sample which consists of university students who were studying at elementary science education, elementary education, and electric electronic engineering departments. Number of sample is 201. Confirmatory factor analyses run through Amos 24.0 software. It is believed that SAS is a valuable contribution to the science education field since it has unidimensional structure and proved its item discrimination power, and alongside with an excellent internal consistency. SAS also offers opportunity to develop multidimensional science attitude scale. For that purpose, original SAS and English version of it are provided in appendixes.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Science Attitude
• Scale Development
• Scale validation

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