Validation of the revised scale of students’ attitudes towards research

Abstract

ABSTRACT In higher education, research courses are an integral part of all academic majors that intend to help students in becoming better readers and/or authors of research. However, there is a paucity in instruments that measure various constructs that are related to research education. The 13-item revised scale of attitudes toward research is one of the few internationally available instruments that is intended to measure higher education students’ attitudes toward research. In two studies using different samples of undergraduate students, we collected evidence of validity and examined the reliability of this three-factor scale. In the first study, confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit of the three-factor model to the data, as compared to the one- and two-factor models, when one item from the anxiety subscale was deleted. The resulting 12-item modified scale was cross validated in the second study, where convergent and discriminant validity evidence supported the validity of the interpretations based on the scale scores. Moreover, reliability was estimated via internal consistency and test-retest methods. Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, stability coefficient, and intraclass correlations were all acceptable. The findings of the current study supported the use of the modified scale in measuring university students’ attitudes toward research methods courses.