Development and Validation of a Reading Self-Efficacy Scale

Abstract

Reading self-efficacy performs a fundamental role in gaining academic achievement in college education. Review of the related literature unveils that it needs to be enriched by conducting further research on college students’ reading self-efficacy. The paucity of investigations into college students’ reading self-efficacy could have a connection with the lack of a comprehensive reading self-efficacy scale targeting exclusively measuring it. For this reason, this study aims at developing and validating a reading self-efficacy scale which could be used to measure college students’ reading self-efficacy. The data was collected from three distinct groups consisting of a total of 430 students of the departments of English language teaching and English language and literature studying at state universities in Turkey. The findings obtained from exploratory factor analysis revealed that the scale had a unidimensional structure and the ones provided by confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the structure of the scale. The developed and validated 16-item reading self-efficacy scale could prompt the university teachers of reading to undertake studies with an eye to examining their students’ reading self-efficacy.