Physics Course Attitudes Scale for High School Students: A Validity and Reliability Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop an up-to-date scale with high validity and reliability that could reveal the attitudes of high school students towards the physics course. In the process of developing the scale in question, three independent samples were formed, and the data obtained from a total of 1118 high school students were analyzed. Firstly, the opinions of 152 high school students on the physics course were collected in written form, and a 58-item pool was formed. Afterwards, the draft scale which was designed as a 5-point Likert-type scale whose items were reduced to 43 based on expert opinions was applied on 602 high school students. Based on the data obtained, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was carried out. With the EFA, it is determined that 22 items of the scale have factor loads between 0.490 and 0.816, while they explain 66.276% of the total variance and are distributed under four factors. These factors are named as interest, unwillingness, academic self and necessity. Additionally, these four factors are significantly correlated, and there is no autocorrelation problem. For all items in the scale, item-factor and item-test correlation coefficients were calculated, and it is determined that each item is consistent with not only the factor it is under but also the entire test.