Attitude towards science: Development and structural validation of School Science Attitude Questionnaire (SSAQ)

Abstract

The objective of this study is to facilitate teaching and research related to students' attitude toward science, by development and validation of Spanish version of the School Science Attitude Questionnaire (SSAQ). Following a thorough review of the literature, we could observe the shortage of instruments designed and validated in Spanish, so the SSAQ has been constructed from a recently created instrument, with content validity and piloted, but lacking of a solid theoretical support and construct validity. The process followed attends to its translation from English into Spanish and suitability of the content through expert assessment in order to carry out the validation in the Spanish academic context. The psychometric validity of the instrument, consisting of four factors and 20 items, was performed on a sample of 259 students of Secondary Education (1st to 4th grade). The exploratory structural analysis yields satisfactory values, also the confirmatory factor analysis shows an adequate statistical fit, according to the values obtained for χ2/d.f. (1.028), CFI (.986), RMR (.056) and NFI (.980). Finally, the four factors and the items that make up the structure of the SSAQ are adjusted to the link between belief and attitude according to the Theory of Reasoned Action.