A Comprehensive Review of Instruments Measuring Attitudes Toward Science
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A Comprehensive Review of Instruments Measuring Attitudes Toward Science Radu Bogdan Toma 1
& Norman G. Lederman
2
Accepted: 24 September 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
The development of attitudes toward science instruments has recently emerged in science education research. However, a comprehensive review of their psychometric properties, using currently accepted assessment standards, has not yet been completed. Consequently, this review discusses the validity and reliability of 18 measures published between 2005 and 2019 in leading science education journals. Findings showed that construct validity and internal consistency reliability was reported for all instruments; however, evidence for predictive validity and temporal stability reliability was rather scarce, which could limit their use in intervention and correlational type of studies. Similarly, content validity was found to be underreported. Consequently, the relevance, comprehensiveness, and comprehensibility of the items in some instruments are currently unknown and yet to be established in future studies. Finally, there is a gap in the literature regarding instruments that can be used across different countries and scientific disciplines, which could restrict accumulative and comparative results worldwide. Since the use of valid and reliable measurement instruments is a crucial aspect of educational research, the findings of this study could be useful in assisting researchers and practitioners in selecting the most appropriate measure for different research designs. Keywords Attitudes toward science . Validity . Reliability . Psychometric properties . Scales
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-02009967-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Radu Bogdan Toma [email protected] Norman G. Lederman [email protected]
1
Department of Specific Didactics, University of Burgos, Burgos, Spain
2
Department of Mathematics & Science Education, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA
Research in Science Education
Introduction The development of positive attitudes toward science is an important aspect of the scientific literacy agenda. Since attitudes may affect science performance, career selection, and individuals’ support of government-funded research (Besley 2016; Bybee and McCrae 2011; Newell et al. 2015), attitudes have perennially been of interest to science educators. However, research on attitude toward science has long been hampered by measurement instruments that lack key validity and reliability properties. Indeed, Munby (1997) found validity issues that resulted in discrepant results across studies. Blalock et al. (2008) echoed these criticisms by revealing that “there are few instruments available with the necessary psychometric data to merit recommendation” (p. 961). Recently, two new studies discussed limitations in instruments used to measure attitudes toward science. Specifically, Aydeniz and Kotowski (2014) consider
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