Competition Skills and Challenge Level Scale (CCS) in gifted and talented education: development, validity and reliability

Abstract

Competitiveness is an important factor for giving gifted students a chance to test their abilities and motivates them to bring out the best in their selves. I can say that measuring and assessing competition skills and challenging levels of their potential is very important in gifted and talented education. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to introduce competition skills and challenge level scale (CCS) which is developed for Gifted and Talented secondary school grade students. A draft structure consisting of 31 items was created in the light of expert opinions of the measurement tool to be developed. Explanatory factor analysis was applied for the construct validity of the scale. As a result of the explanatory factor analysis, it was determined that the factor load weights of 3 items were overlapping and low, and it was decided to exclude items 11, 21 and 29 from the scale. As a result of the varimax analysis, it was determined that the scale consisted of two factors. These factors were named as “Perception of Competition” and “Level of Difficulty”, respectively. These two factors explain 62.06% of the variance in all scale scores. The internal consistency reliability of the entire scale was calculated as 0.95. In the light of all the analysis results, it can be said that this scale, which aims to evaluate the perceptions of gifted students' level of competition and striving, has reliable results in terms of validity and reliability tests. As such, the scale can be used to evaluate competitive environments in gifted individuals. Thus, measures can be taken to ensure that gifted students do not fail due to the educational atmosphere below their potential.

Keywords

• Gifted and Talented Education
• Competitiveness
• Competition Skills
• Challenge Level
• Underachievement
• Motivation
• School Environment

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