Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Secondary School Science Students’ Social Capital Scale

Bircan Ergun

doi:10.12973/ejmste/80623

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop a scale which will ensure that social capital levels of secondary school science students are determined. Validation and reliability works of the scale were performed on 304 (154 girls and 150 boys) students in North Cyprus. In the process of developing the scale, explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis were done, and reliability was determined with Cronbach alfa and split-half methods which are internal consistency tests. In addition to the Cronbach alfa and split-half tests, as the item total item correlations are sufficient, no item was excluded from the scale and it was confirmed that the scale was reliable. Results of confirmatory factor analysis show that the model belonging to social capital scale has perfect consistence and it consists of three dimensions such as trust in peer relations, communication intra-family relations, and sensitiveness in friendship relations.

Highlights

The first known usage of the concept “social capital” was made by Lyda Judsen Hanifan
The purpose of this study is to develop a scale which will ensure that social capital levels of secondary school science students are determined
Results of confirmatory factor analysis show that the model belonging to social capital scale has perfect consistence and it consists of three dimensions such as trust in peer relations, communication intrafamily relations, and sensitiveness in friendship relations

Summary

Introduction

The first known usage of the concept “social capital” was made by Lyda Judsen Hanifan. The American reformist, educator Hanifan (1916) developed the concept “social capital” in his work titled “The Rural School Community Center” in order to attract attention to the existence of good will, friendship, sympathy and social relations related to the daily lives of people between individuals and families who are not covered by the economic dimension of social capital. This concept was further developed with the studies of Coleman (1988), Portes (1998) and Putnam’s (1995) where is alternative definitions of social capital were emphasised, mostly due to the fact that people from different disciplines use the social capital concept for different targets. It is stated that the reason behind the success or failure of some societies or communities within societies is the strength or weakness of this type of capital

Objectives

Methods

Results