DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOCIAL STUDIES COURSE ATTITUDE SCALE

Abstract

This research is a scale development study to measure students' attitudes towards social studies course. The study group comprised of 7th grade students studying in Gaziantep in the first semester of the 2023-2024 academic year. Initially, an item pool consisted of 50 items was created for the scale. Expert opinion was obtained to verify the face and content validity of the items. According to the experts' opinions, the content validity ratio values for the items were calculated using the Lawshe (1975) technique. Since the calculations proved that all 50 items ensured the content validity, all items included in the scale. Exploratory factor analysis was performed for the construct validity, and then the scale was applied to 429 students. In the next stage, the communality values for each item were calculated and 15 items with communality value below .45 were removed from the scale. Then, factor load, eigenvalue, variance and cumulative variance values analyses were carried out for the remaining 35 items and a 5-factor structure was obtained. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to check the compatibility among the items. It was found that the confirmatory factor fit index values of the items were in accordance with the reference range. Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient was also calculated for the overall scale and for each factor. According to the findings, this scale is said to be quite reliable consisting of 35 items with a 5-point Likert type and measures 5 sub-dimensions, which can be used to measure students' attitudes towards social studies course