Development of Parent Educational Philosophy Tendency Scale: A Validity and Reliability Study

Abstract

The present study endeavors to formulate a measurement tool that is both valid and reliable, intended to assess the educational philosophy tendencies of parents. The sampling process was executed through the utilization of multistage sampling. 1,330 parents formed the sample of the scale development process. This sample was randomly divided into two, half for exploratory factor analysis and half for confirmatory factor analysis. 65.7% of the participants are female and 34.3% are male. 41.2% of the participants are primary school parents, 30.6% are secondary school parents and 28.2% are high school parents. The Parent Educational Philosophy Tendency Scale’s construct validity was first tested with exploratory factor analysis and then confirmatory factor analysis was performed, and findings related to these analyzes are presented respectively. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis, the scale consisted of 19 items and three sub-dimensions, and these dimensions are named individualist, subject-centered, and socialist in line with the literature. The three-factor structure of the scale was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. In addition, the differences between the averages of the 27% lower and upper groups in the scale items were significant. According to the reliability analysis, the Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient values of the scale are .896 for the “individualist” sub-dimension, .781 for the “socialist” sub-dimension, and .717 for the “subject-centered” sub-dimension of the Parent Educational Philosophy Tendency Scale. The Parent Educational Philosophy Tendency Scale represents the perception of parents’ philosophy of education. The internal consistency coefficients of the sub-dimensions of the Parent Educational Philosophy Tendency Scale were at a reasonable level. As a result, in the light of the analyzes and expert opinions, the items of the scale could measure the intended quality and the structure to be measured, the construct validity was high and it performed stable measurements.