Abstract

This study aims to analyze the factor structure of the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST) by adapting the second part, which consists of five-point Likert scale, 52 items, and 3 factors (deep, strategic, surface), in Turkish. For this purpose, firstly one of the authors, Noel Entwistle, was contacted via email, and the necessary permission was received regarding the adaptation of the scale. The English and Turkish versions of the scale, which was translated into Turkish with the help of English and Turkish language experts, were applied to Dokuz Eylül University (DEU) English Language Teacher Education students (N = 46) one week apart, and it was determined that there was high correlation (r = .805, p=.05) between the scores of the students from both applications. Then, for examining the factor structures of the scale, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was performed with the data collected from 421 students who are studying at DEU and taking a basic physics course. It was determined that, by removing 5 items with factor loadings below .4 and the difference between factor loadings less than 0.1 from the scale, the scale could be collected under 3 factors compatible with the original factor structure. The scale was subjected to Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) in order to test the compatibility of the three-factor structure of the scale determined by EFA. As a result of CFA, it was determined that the three-factor structure has sufficient compatibility with our data set (χ2/sd=1.96, RMSEA=.072; CFI=.82, GFI=.78, NFI=.88). Besides, the scale was subjected to discriminant analysis in order to determine how successful the ASSIST was in separating the learning approaches of students and to determine the discriminant functions. With Quadratic Discriminant Analysis, it was concluded that a student assigned to one of the 3 sub-dimensions in the scale could be considered significantly separated from other sub-dimensions, and thus the learning approaches of the students could be determined successfully.

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