FACTOR STRUCTURE OF THE
“ATTITUDES TOWARD RESEARCH” SCALE
ELENA C. PAPANASTASIOU
Intercollege, Cyprus
elenapap@ucy.ac.cy
SUMMARY
Students at the undergraduate level usually tend to view research methods courses negatively. However, an understanding of these attitudes is necessary to help instructors facilitate the learning of research for their students, by enabling them to create more positive attitudes toward such courses. The aim of this study is to describe the development of an “attitudes toward research” scale and verify the dimensions of attitudes toward research among undergraduate students enrolled in introductory research courses. The basic hypothesis of this research study is that the concept of attitudes is multidimensional in nature. The sample of the study consisted of 226 students who had completed a research methods course. Based on a factor analysis, five factors of student attitudes toward research were identified. These were the factors of usefulness of research, anxiety, affect indicating positive feelings about research, life relevancy of research to the students’ daily lives, and difficulty of research.
Keywords: Statistics education research; Research methods;
Quantitative research attitudes; Scale development; Factor structure; Attitudes
toward research; Psychometrics
__________________________
Statistics Education Research
Journal, 4(1), 16-26, http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/serj
Ó International Association for Statistical Education (IASE/ISI), May, 2005
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ELENA C. PAPANASTASIOU
Intercollege, Cyprus
Mourouzi 7, #402
1055 Nicosia
Cyprus