Development of the Interest in Arabic Culture Scale (IACS): A Measure of Interest in Arabic Culture for Students Learning Arabic in Japanese Universities

Abstract

With the increasing demand for Arabic teaching in Japanese universities, it is necessary to understand the Japanese students’ perspectives on learning Arabic, including their interests, motivations and needs. A previous study suggested that interest in the Arabic culture is one of the students’ major reasons learning Arabic. The purpose of this study was to develop a measure of interest in Arabic culture for Arabic learners in Japanese universities, in order to facilitate an understanding of the research problem. The participants included 662 students (484 women and 178 men, mean age 20.87 years) who were taking Arabic class(es) in Japanese universities. It was assumed that, for Japanese students, the Arabic culture comprised 12 Arabic cultural elements, as indicated by a previous study on the students. Therefore, 12 questionnaire items corresponding these cultural elements were created, and administered to the participants. To assess the construct validity of the measure, the participants were also administered three learning outcomes scales: the Arabic Learning Motivation Scale, Arabic Learning Effort Scale, and Arabic Learning Satisfaction Scale. Since a factor analysis using the principal factor method extracted one factor from the 12 items, the final measure of the interest comprised all the 12 items, and was called the Interest in Arabic Culture Scale (IACS). The IACS exhibited good internal consistency (α = 0.90). Further, as expected, the IACS scores were positively correlated with scores on all of the three learning outcomes scales. Finally, the construct validity of the IACS was found acceptable.