Development and Validation of an Instrument Assessing Preschool Children's Attitude Toward Science

• In Event: 42.043 - Promoting and Measuring STEM Learning

Abstract

Children’s development of attitudes about science begins early. However, little is known regarding how children feel about science in the preschool years. The lack of a psychologically sound instrument that can appropriately capture young children’s attitude towards science is another challenge faced by early childhood science researchers. The present study attempts to define and investigate an instrument used to measure preschool students’ science attitudes by a) providing a clear definition of the construct (its items and their correspondence to the proposed construct to be measured); b) by examining the reliability of the items defining the measure; and c) by demonstrating the validity of the measure through examining its psychometric properties with preschool children.

Author

• Tingting Reid, University of Hawaii at Manoa