A psychometric scale for determining university students' attitudes towards the statistics courses they take: Statistical attitude scale (SAS)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to develop a Likert type scale to measure the attitudes of university students towards the statistics course they take. Firstly, first and third grade students from Ondokuz Mayis University Arts and Science Faculty Psychology Department are asked to write sentences which include their attitude towards statistic course in sub-dimensions like love, joy, fear, interest, importance, trust, used in daily life and career; then an item pool of 70 items obtained from sentences by created a large literature study. The item pool is examined by academic members of Ondokuz Mayis University Faculty of Education Department of Education Sciences and is reduced to 48 items, then it is examined by academic members of Ondokuz Mayis University Science and Arts Faculty, Department of Turkish Language and Literature and suited to grammar and spelling rules. The pilot Likert type scale of 48 items is implemented on 191 university students taking the statistics course. Item analysis tools are used on the obtained data and 18 items are decided to be removed from the scale. The recreated Likert type scale of 30 items is implemented on 246 university students taking the statistics course and factor analysis is used on the obtained data. 13 items are removed from the scale and it is seen that 17 items are grouped in 3 factors. Later, the final Likert type scale of 17 items is implemented on 477 university students taking the statistics course. The last obtained data has a 0, 916 Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient and its internal consistency is perfect. The KMO value, testing the suitability of the final scale for factor analysis, found to be 0, 946 and the Bartlett test results found to be ?2=3305, 282 (p=0, 00<0, 01) which indicates that the suitability of the scale for factor analysis is perfect. © Sila Science. All Rights Reserved.