Development and validity of a questionnaire to measure attitudes towards guidance activities with the optimal scoring method

Giovanni Battista Flebus

In order to develop a scale, aimed at measuring junior high school teachers’ attitude towards vocational guidance, some twenty interviews with teacher were conducted, which led to develop 20 hypothesis of item. They were subsequently cast into multiple-choice questions and proposed to 189 teacher of several schools in an Italian region. By relying on the categorical factor analysis, also known as optimal scaling or correspondence analysis, 12 items were thus individualized which measure the attitude towards guidance activities, and tap opinions, beliefs, expectations and behaviors connected with such attitude. The method allows one to subsequently apply traditional factor and reliability analysis to individual items (Cronbach’s alpha is .78) Concurrent validity with nine definitions of guidance helped to give suppor to the validty of the scale.

Keywords
School guidance, attitudes, validity, measurement tools, teachers, optimal scoring method.

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