Adaptation of Science Attitude Scale Developed for Elementary School Students to Turkish: Validity and Reliability Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to adapt “Science Attitude Scale-SAS”, developed by Wang & Berlin
(2010), to Turkish, and investigate the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of the scale. The original
version of the scale was composed of 30 items gathered under a one factor structure. First, permission was
sought from the developers of the scale. Then, the items of the scale were translated into Turkish by researchers.
The linguistic equivalence of the scale was examined by referring to the views of English and Turkish language
experts. Once the scale took its final form, an English language expert translated the items of the scale from
Turkish to English. The results obtained from these stages indicated that the Turkish translation of the scale
closely approximated to the original English scale. Herewith, translation and cross-language validity of the scale
was completed. The Turkish version of the scale was administered to total of 1013 elementary school students in
Bartın and Düzce. The construct validity of the scale was examined by exploratory factor analysis and
confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, the scale consisted of 26 items was gathered under a one factor for
elementary school students. The reliability coefficient (Cronbach-Alpha) for the whole scale was calculated as
.916 for elementary school students. It is expected that this scale might serve as a beneficial tool for teachers to
collect information about elementary school students’ attitudes towards science, and as an alternative attitude
scale for researchers