Abstract:

Today, using higher order thinking skills to make decisions about the events and situations one encounters on a daily basis has become a necessity. Scientific attitude has an important place in the decision-making process of individuals because it involves higher-order thinking skills. Individuals with scientific attitude can make more effective decisions by interpreting the events and situations they encounter in the decision-making process. This study aims to develop a reliable and valid scale to measure the scientific attitudes of secondary school students. For this purpose, an item pool was created by analyzing the relevant literature and previously developed scales. The created item pool was presented to the opinions of field experts, pre-service teachers, teachers and secondary school students to evaluate the content validity of the scale. Adjustments were made to the scale items according to these opinions. After conducting an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to test the construct validity of the scale, a 22-item, six-dimensional structure emerged. This structure was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In addition, Cronbach's Alpha internal consistency coefficient was calculated for the reliability of the scale and the difference between the item total scores of the lower and upper 27% groups were examined. Thus, a reliable and valid Scientific Attitude Scale for Secondary School Students consisting of six dimensions and 22 items in five-point Likert type was developed. This scale can be used to determine the level of scientific attitude of secondary school students and to examine its relationship with different variables.

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