Development of inquiry skills scale for life studies: Validity and reliability study

Abstract

This study aims to develop a scale that can measure primary school students’ inquiry skills for life studies as valid and reliable. The research consisted of 511 primary school students studying in 15 different schools in the city center in a province in the south of Turkey in the February-May semesters of the 2021-2022 academic year. In the study, the participants were selected by chance, and each participant took part voluntarily. In the study, expert opinion was consulted for the scope and appearance validity of the scale, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis were applied for structure validity. As a result of EFA, a structure consisting of 26 items and four factors explains 40.903% of the total variance. The resulting factors are inquiry ability, asking questions, making sense of the answers to these questions, and recognizing the problem in the middle.