A Study on the Development of an Attitude Scale Towards Distance Education

Abstract

The overall aim of this study is to develop “an attitude scale towards distance education", the validity and reliability of which can be used to measure the attitudes of the teachers who have experienced distance education systems especially during the coronavirus pandemic. For this purpose, first of all, 20 teachers who worked actively in distance education systems during the emergency remote education period were asked to write an essay on their feelings and thoughts about distance education. Then, an item pool consisting of 69 items was created examining these essays written by the teachers and reviewing the relevant literature in detail, Next, these items were presented to the group consisting of assessment and evaluation experts and field experts, and a draft scale form with 29 items was prepared in line with the opinions of the experts. The data of the study were obtained from three different study groups. The data were collected from 250 participants for the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), from 171 participants for the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and from 45 participants for the reliability study. As a result of EFA, the scale structure consisting of 16 items and 3 subdimensions which explain 61% of the total variance and whose factor loading values range between 0.84 and 0.54 emerged. Then, CFA was applied to the 16 items that represent the dimensions of "being satisfied with distance education" (8 items), "being active in distance education" (4 items), and "adopting distance education" (4 items) obtained as a result of EFA. It was concluded that this structure was also confirmed according to the CFA fit indices (X2/sd=1.92, CFI=0.95, GFI=0.88, IFI=0.95, RMSEA=0.007). In the reliability analyses of the ATDES, it was observed that the Cronbach Alpha coefficient varied between 0.77 and 0.92 for the overall scale and its sub-dimensions, and the test-retest reliability ranged between 0.72 and 0.98. In conclusion, it is determined that the ATDES, developed within the scope of this study, is a valid and reliable attitude scale that can be used to measure teachers' attitudes towards distance education.