Adaptation of Science Attitude Scale Developed for Primary School Students into Turkish: Validity and Reliability Studies

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study is to adapt "Science Attitude Scale-SAS", developed by Wang & Berlin (2010), to Turkish, and investigate the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of the scale. The original version of the scale was composed of 30 items gathered under a one factor structure. First, permission was sought from the developers of the scale. Then, the items of the scale were translated into Turkish by researchers. The linguistic equivalence of the scale was examined by referring to the views of English and Turkish language experts. Once the scale took its final form, an English language expert translated the items of the scale from Turkish to English. The results obtained from these stages indicated that the Turkish translation of the scale closely approximated to the original English scale. Herewith, translation and cross-language validity of the scale was completed. The Turkish version of the scale was administered to total of 1013 elementary school students in Bartın and Düzce. The construct validity of the scale was examined by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, the scale consisted of 26 items was gathered under a one factor for elementary school students. The reliability coefficient (Cronbach-Alpha) for the whole scale was calculated as .916 for elementary school students. It is expected that this scale might serve as a beneficial tool for teachers to collect information about elementary school students' attitudes towards science, and as an alternative attitude scale for researchers.

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Secondary School Students’ Predictors of Science Attitudes

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