Development of Mathematics Collaborative Problem-Solving Skills Scale

Abstract

Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) is one of the most critical and necessary skills in education and workplace; hence, its assessment is a necessary subject of research. CPS assessment tools must be crafted to establish the effectiveness of the pedagogies to CPS development. Therefore, to address these gaps, this study developed a Likert scale called Mathematics Collaborative Problem Solving Skills (MaCoPSS) Scale. The scale development followed the process: (1) item generation, (2) item evaluation, (3) try-outs, (4) Exploratory Analysis, (5) final evaluation. Open-ended questionnaires were administered to 273 respondents. After analysis, 551 statements were produced as initial item pool. The items are evaluated and only 59 of them are used for the draft scale for the try-outs. The scale was administered to 648 students for the try-outs and responses were cleaned then subjected to Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). Two factors, namely social skills (SS) and problem-solving skills (PSS) were extracted. To establish internal consistency, the factors are correlated to one another (r=0.708), and factor to total raw score (TRS) correlations are highly correlated: SS-TRS (r=0.955) and PSS-TRS (r=0.894). The final scale consists of 27 SS and 17 PSS items. The overall reliability coefficient of the scale is α=0.941. The resulting scale is considered valid and reliable.