Summary.— Many Scottish and Malaysian children study introductory science using the same teaching materials. A Scottish and a Malay sample of 14‐year‐old schoolchildren have been tested using word association tests of the meaning of a selection of 14 science concept words from the first year of integrated science. The tests clearly distinguished between the two samples. The Malay children generally produced more associates than the Scottish children and their responses were more homogeneous.
Sets of semantic consensus measures extracted from the data for samples and sub‐samples showed high positive correlations for within‐nation comparisons (mean 0·95) whereas the cross‐nation correlations produced low correlations (mean 0·23). Factor analysis on the sets of SCI data for each of the 19 schools clearly produced Malay and Scottish factors. The reasons for the clear distinctions between the two national groups are discussed in terms of the detailed word association test data.
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