Construction and Validity of Geometry Attitude Scales

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and establish the validity and reliability of an instrument to measure students' attitudes toward geometry. Participants consisted of 264 undergraduate students from two universities, one in the Midwest and one in the Southwest. The instrument is a 5‐point Likert‐scaled survey consisting of 32 statements and 3 subscales. The internal consistency using Cronbach's coefficient alpha was 0.95 for the confidence subscale, 0.93 for the usefulness subscale, and 0.92 for the enjoyment subscale. For the overall instrument using the 32 items that comprised the three subscales, internal consistency reliability analysis revealed a Cronbach's coefficient alpha of 0.96. Additionally, this article reports on the content, criterion, and construct validity of the instrument.

Turkish Adaptation of Utley Geometry Attitude Scale: A Validity and Reliability Study

“…This study aimed to contribute to the work on factor structure and psychometric properties of the Utley Geometry Attitude Scale (Utley, 2007) by translating it into Turkish and evaluating its validity and reliability through undergraduate students in a Turkish sample. Participants, instrument and the data analysis of the study are as follows.…”

“…However, there is a need for attitude scales that are content specific such as geometry, algebra, probability and statistics (Utley, 2007). One reason for this is that students' attitudes towards mathematics in general and their attitudes towards specific mathematical topics might differ considerably from each other (Bulut et al, 2002).…”

“…Among these content domains, geometry is pivotal in that it helps students learn to reason and see the axiomatic structure of mathematics (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 2000, p.41) and is covered intensively in all grade levels of school mathematics curriculum. However, although geometry is an important domain, there are few attitudinal scales that are specific to it (e.g., Bulut, Ekici, İşeri & Helvacı, 2002;Duatepe & Ubuz, 2007;Mogari, 2004;Utley, 2007). Thus, it is thought that it would be significant to have a scale that particularly measures learners' attitudes towards geometry.…”

“…Therefore, we want to go further in this direction and attempt to fill this gap by adapting Utley Geometry Attitude Scale (Utley, 2007) to Turkish. By this way, it is expected that the adapted version of the UGAS would be helpful for researchers seeking to determine Turkish undergraduate students' geometry attitudes.…”

“…The results revealed that while students' geometry attitude scores significantly correlated with GPA scores, their geometry attitudes did not significantly differ in terms of gender and socioeconomic status. In a recent study, Utley (2007) developed and established the validity of a geometry attitude scale to measure undergraduate students' attitudes towards geometry. To be more specific, the participants majored in a wide majority of programs including education, agricultural economics, aviation, business management, fire protection, pre-law, premed, and zoology.…”