Development and validation of a questionnaire to measure primary school children\u2019s images of and attitudes towards curiosity (the CIAC questionnaire)

Tim Post,Juliette H Walma Van Der Molen

doi:10.1007/s11031-018-9728-9

Abstract

This paper presents a validation study of a questionnaire to measure primary children’s images of and attitudes towards curiosity (the CIAC questionnaire). Policy documents and scientific studies on twenty-first century learning increasingly promote the value of stimulating children’s curiosity in primary school. However, no well-established measurement instruments yet exist to assess children’s curiosity within educational settings. To fill this void, we focused on the measurement of children’s perceptions of curiosity, as important precursors to children’s potential curiosity-driven behavior. Based on attitude and curiosity theory, we developed seven components of children’s images of and attitudes towards curiosity. We translated these components into corresponding measurement scales, which comprise the CIAC. Results of a validation study among 737 children (ages 8–13), using factor analyses, largely confirmed the factor structures of the image and attitude scales and indicated good convergent and discriminant validity. In addition, we provide evidence for the predictive power of children’s images and attitudes on their motivation to be curious.

Highlights

This paper presents a validation study of a questionnaire to measure primary children’s images of and attitudes towards curiosity
We examined the discriminant power of each item by computing the standard deviation and range of responses
We examined the ability of the Attitudes towards Epistemic Curiosity subscales to predict scores on Mastery Orientation Motivation and Performance Avoidance Motivation

Summary

Introduction

This paper presents a validation study of a questionnaire to measure primary children’s images of and attitudes towards curiosity (the CIAC questionnaire). Curiosity may be defined as a desire to seek and acquire new information (Berlyne 1954; Kashdan 2004; Litman 2008; Loewenstein 1994). Subsequent research by, for example, Loewenstein (1994), Litman et al (2005), and Kashdan et al (2007) has added to the work of Berlyne and Piaget by further defining the dimensionality, determinants, and measures of curiosity. Children’s curiosity is linked to wonderment (e.g., Opdal 2001), question-asking (e.g., Jirout 2011), and explanation-seeking behavior (e.g., Litman et al 2005) and predominantly understood in terms of epistemic curiosity: the desire to seek and acquire new intellectual information (Litman and Spielberger 2003; Loewenstein 1994; Piotrowski et al 2014). Epistemic curiosity is believed to improve children’s undertaking of complex inquiry activities (e.g., Von Stumm et al 2011), their persistence with learning (e.g., Metz 2008), and their memorization of new information (e.g., Jepma et al 2012)

Methods

Results

Conclusion