An Impirical Investigation of Health Teacher Credibility

Abstract

This study identified the low-inference teacher behaviors and characteristics that students perceive best describe their most believable health teachers. Students in 15 randomly selected public high school health classes responded to an open-ended questionnaire asking what their most believable health teachers had done that made them so believable

More than 1,000 student perception statements were analyzed by a data reduction process emphasizing Source Credibility Theory and the judgments of a panel of health educators and a panel of experts in credibility research. Analysis resulted in a set of 32 descriptors which present an operational definition and establish construct validity for the variable Health Teacher Credibility