Democratic behaviour tendency scale at school: A validity and reliability study

Abstract

This study aims to develop a measurement tool to find out the democratic behaviour tendencies of middle school students at school. For this purpose, the scale items were created by drawing upon the relevant literature and consulting with experts. The triple Likert-type scale, prepared by considering the levels of middle school students, was administered to a total of 512 students studying in five middle schools in the Denizli, Uşak, and Afyon provinces in the fall semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. The Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) revealed that the scale structure consisted of 12 items gathered under 3 factors “Being Respectful”, “Being Responsible” and “Equal Treatment” and factor loads varied between .49 and .74. The correlation analysis revealed that the correlation coefficients of the items collected under the factors forming the scale were higher than .20. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), which was carried out to confirm the structure formed with the EFA, revealed that the model formed was perfectly compatible with the collected data and the factors differed significantly, according to the Chi-Square (X2), significance and measurement values. It was also found that the developed scale explained 46.40% of the total variance and the Cronbach's Alpha value for the overall scale was .72. It was concluded that the measurement tool is a valid and reliable structure that can be used to determine the democratic behaviour tendencies of middle school students at school.