"LOCALIZED REVISION OF THE EPISTEMIC CURIOSITY SCALE FOR CHINESE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS "

Abstract

"Objective: The goal of this research was to revise Litman’s Epistemic Curiosity Scale (ECS), so that it can be applied to the evaluation of the developmental characteristics among Chinese senior high school students. Methods: 25 senior high school students were first invited to a trial test for confirming the item comprehensibility, after then 602 senior high students were enrolled to the formal testing for the item analysis and exploratory factor analysis. And 533 Chinese high school students responding ECS were submitted to test the construct validity of the localized Chinese-version ECS. Then the scale was applied to 366 subjects to test the internal consistency indices and criteria correlation validity. Finally, 153 senior high school students were used to test test-retest reliability of the ECS. Results: All of the 10 items were retained, through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, the two-factor model which was consistent with the original scale proved to be the most appropriate, its main goodness of fit indices were: x2/df=2.68, CFI=0.93, NFI=0.93, TLI=0.90, GFI=0.97, AGFI=0.95, and RMSEA=0.06. The study found internal consistency indices (Cronbach’s alpha) from 0.73 to 0.78 in the first three samples. In addition, the ECS had a high correlation with Chinese version of Trait Curiosity Scale (r=0.53, p<0.001), test-retest reliability over 2-month interval was 0.54 to 0.56 for each of the 2 sub-scale and 0.64 for the total ECS. Conclusion: Findings in these studies support the cross-cultural validity of the ECS in Chinese senior high school students."