A psychometric evaluation of an existing attitude scale toward education

The Attitude toward Education Scale developed by Glassey in 1945 was administered to two samples of participants from two different geographical areas of the United States. The scale had no previous reliability or validity data. There were two goals: (1) to determine if such a dated instrument can still be used to measure attitudes toward education today and (2) to compare the attitude toward education of university students from two culturally different universities: A university in California and a university in Mississippi. An analysis of the item-to-total correlations for the two samples showed that 9 of the original items could be dropped from the instrument in the California sample and 8 items from the Mississippi sample. The reliability for the reduced scale was .88 for the Mississippi sample and .82 for the California sample. Analyses also showed that the modified scale for females and males differed in reliability. A factor analysis of both samples gave a 6-factor solution. The underlying structure for the scale was different between the two regional samples. ********** The topic of education is one that consistently finds its way into the news (Hampton, 2007; Hess, 2007). It is an important topic for any person with political aspirations (see editorial in Harvard Educational Review, 2006). However, some people believe that politicians are out of touch with the actual people involved in education, such as teachers, parents and children (Bansal; 2007; Rosman, 2007). Additionally, informal polls are not scientific enough to let people know how parents, administrator, teachers and children feel about education. Hence, people with formal training in research and science need to be involved in correctly determining how people feel toward education. Those involved with the scientific study of education need more than just measures of intelligence and aptitude. There is also a need to accurately measure the attitude of people toward education. Certain studies have demonstrated the value of determining attitudes toward education. Raty (2003) studied the difference between parents who were academically educated and those who were vocationally educated on attitudes toward education for their children. Raty found parents with positive recollections of their education had higher levels of satisfaction with the education system than parents that had negative recollections of their education. Gorman (1998) compared the educational attitudes of parents from different social classes and found attitude toward their children's education to be dependent on social class background. The attitudes of parents toward higher education could influence their children's chances of obtaining a college degree. Hayes (1992) found that educational attitudes of immigrant children were dependent on the child's immigrant status. Loadman & Mahan (1987) compared the educational attitudes of teachers and student teachers. They found teachers with highly progressive and/or highly traditional attitudes toward education were perceived by student teachers as less effective supervisors. Schmeck and Nguyen (1996) studied the factors that influenced students' attitudes toward education. They found that directive family influence lowered the efficacy and assertion of college students while nondirective family influence increased the efficacy and assertion. In each of these studies the instrument used to measure attitudes played a key role. Measuring instruments can be written and developed to serve such a purpose, but doing so and doing it correctly is no simple process (Azman, 2004). The researcher developing such a measure would have to ensure that certain psychometric criteria of the measuring instrument are met (Aiken, 1997; Dawes, 1972; Edwards, 1957). An alternative approach would be to find existing or possibly outdated measuring instruments that have some or no established psychometric data in need of revision or evaluation. …