Psychometric reevaluation of the scientific attitude inventory-revised (SAI-II)

Michael J. Lichtenstein, Steven V. Owen, Cheryl L. Blalock, Yan Liu, Kacy A. Ramirez, Linda A. Pruski, Carolyn E. Marshall, Mary Anne Toepperwein

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

The central purposes of this study were to review the development and evolution of the Scientific Attitude Inventory (SAI) and then reevaluate the psychometric properties of the revised form of the SAI, the Scientific Attitude Inventory II (SAI-II). The SAI-II was administered to a convenience sample of 543 middle and high school students from five teachers in four schools in four school districts in San Antonio, Texas, at the beginning of the 2004-2005 school year. Confirmatory factor analysis on the full data set failed to support the existence of a 12-factor structure (as proposed by the scale developers) or a one-factor structure. The data were then randomly divided into exploratory [exploratory factor analysis (EFA)] validation and confirmatory [confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)] cross-validation sets. Exploratory and confirmatory models yielded a three-factor solution that did not fit the data well [χ2 (321) = 646, p < .001; RMSEA = .061 (.90 CI = .054-.068); and CFI = .81]. The three factors were labeled "Science is About Understanding and Explaining" (13 items), "Science is Rigid" (6 items), and "I Want to Be a Scientist" (8 items). The α-coefficients for these three factors ranged from 0.59 to 0.85. Whether these identified subscales are valid will require independent investigation. In this sample, and consistent with prior publications, the SAI-II in its current form did not have satisfactory psychometric properties and cannot be recommended for further use.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)600-616
Number of pages17
JournalJournal of Research in Science Teaching
Volume45
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2008

Keywords

  • Attitudes
  • Evaluation and theory
  • General science
  • Statistics/multivariate
  • Survey

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education

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