Abstract:

Materialism, the illness of our age, can be defined as the desire to purchase excess or luxury goods though not necessary. The people with materialistic values tend to possess negative attitudes and behaviour towards their environment. Contrary to the individuals with a materialistic tendency towards the environment, there are also others who pay attention to preserving nature and consume in the light of this view. Individuals learn about materialism by observing reference groups that they have taken as a model such as parents, friends and teachers since their childhood. In this respect, it is important to identify teachers’ materialistic tendencies towards the environment. The purpose of this study is to develop an assessment tool that identifies the materialistic tendencies of the prospective teachers. This study was conducted according to the survey model chosen from among quantitative approaches. The study group was selected by means of purposive sampling method. Prospective teachers studying at Kilis 7 Aralık University (n=300) were involved for Constructive Factor Analysis (AFA), the first step of construct validity study of the scale, and prospective teachers from Gazi University (n=300) were involved for the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (DFA), which is the second stage of the construct validity of the scale, in order to test the factor structure obtained in the first half. As a result of the analyses made, a final scale of 4 Likert type with 39 items was developed. It was determined that the scale had a one-factor structure and accounted for a significant portion of the total variance (54,890%). In order to determine the reliability of the scale, the Cronbach-Alpha internal consistency coefficient was calculated and found to be 0.94. These findings also indicate the validity and reliability of the scale.

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