Development and validation of an instrument to assess Chinese upper-level elementary students’ attitudes towards science

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to develop an instrument to measure upper-level Chinese elementary students’ attitudes towards science by addressing problems with existing ones, as highlighted in the literature. The theoretical framework was drawn from the ABC model, which defines attitudes towards science as consisting of affective, behavioural, and cognitive domains in the study. Instrument development was performed through expert review, small-scale pilot tests and student interviews, large-scale field tests and validation. Factor analysis and Rasch analysis provided reliability and validity evidence. According to the results of the first round of the field test, changes were made to the items and the response category in the second round of the development procedure. The final instrument demonstrated good psychometric properties and consisted of four dimensions: enjoyment of science learning, self-efficacy in science learning, value of science learning and intention to learn and do science.

KEYWORDS:

• Attitudes towards science
• instrument development
• Rasch analysis
• factor analysis
• Chinese upper-level elementary students

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University: [grant number 19QYHX-A002].