engleski

Latent Structure of the Scale Of Attitudes towards Scientific Fields

Past research indicates that people’s attitudes towards science vary significantly across different scientific areas (Lewandowsky, Oberauer & Gignac, 2013 ; Diethelm & McKee, 2009). The Scale of Attitudes towards Scientific Fields (Prot & Anderson, 2015) measures attitudes towards ten specific fields: physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, astronomy, climate science, psychology, sociology, archeology and anthropology. Participants are asked to rate each field in terms of four characteristics: “How important (1), useful (2), scientific (3), ethical (4) is this discipline?”. Attitudes towards each of the ten disciplines are computed as a sum of the four item ratings. In the current study, the scale was used in a sample of 125 freshmen from the Faculty of Kinesiology in Zagreb. A modified version of the scale was used in which “kinesiology” was added to the list of scientific fields. The component analysis with promax rotation was applied on the eleven summative results. The number of significant components was determined by Guttman- Kaiser criterion ; three eigenvalues exceeded 1. The first eigenvalue is 4, 928 and explains 44, 8% of variance. The second and third eigenvalues are considerably lower, 1, 463 and 1, 054, respectively. Together, three eigenvalues explain 67, 68% of total variance. The solution obtained by promax rotation can be easily interpreted. The correlations of three factors are moderate, ranged from 0, 39 to 0, 44. The first factor is mainly defined by physics, chemistry, biology and astronomy, and can be recognized as factor of natural sciences. The second factor is defined by psychology, sociology and anthropology and represents social sciences. The third factor is defined by kinesiology and medicine and represents health sciences. The higher order analysis gave one eigenvalue greater than one, explaining 60, 2% of variance. Undoubtedly, extracted factor represents general factor of attitude toward sciences.

latent structure of the scale of attitudes towards scientific fields

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