A Research Note on the Dimensionality of Daly and Miller's Writing Apprehension Scale

Abstract

Writing apprehension (WA) has been identified as an important construct for understanding the factors that influence student development of writing skills. Although the 1975 Daly and Miller scale has dominated the WA investigation, psychometric research has been limited to the identification of question groupings within the measure. All but the 1983 study by Boozer, Lally, and Stacks have presented the WA questions in the order specified on the original scale even though no theoretical basis for the ordering was provided. It is possible that items presented in the same order may consistently produce similar factors because an ordering effect exists rather than separate dimensions. The current study employs factor analysis and comparability analysis to investigate the impact of item order on the number of factors and the underlying factor structure stability of the WA construct. Results indicate that the randomized item factor structure was comparable with the original item order factor structure.