The school science attitude survey: a new instrument for measuring attitudes towards school science

Abstract

There have been many attempts over the last five decades to measure students' attitudes towards school science. Many of these studies investigated attitudes towards limited aspects of science and utilized large numbers of items to draw snapshot summaries of the educational landscape. An understanding of attitudes towards science, and how these change over time, is of particular importance to educators in Australia and farther afield, who are forming a response to the continued declines in enrolments seen in post-compulsory science courses. We identify a gap among the available instruments for a tool that can measure multiple facets of attitudes using a minimal number of items, while being suited for use in pre-/post-test and longitudinal studies. In this article we describe the definition, validation and statistical refinement of a digital survey tool using single-item web-based visual analogue scales to measure five key perceptions of school science that lead to the formation of a Science Attitude Profile. We suggest that a particular strength of the resulting data analyses is the ability to provide a comparative 'does it work?' critique of various interventions implemented by educators and inform local and national educational policy.