Development and Validation of Robotic Coding Attitude Scale

Abstract

This study aimed to develop a reliable and valid instrument to measure secondary school students’ attitude towards robotic coding and the results of the analyses regarding the Robotic Coding Attitude Scale (RCAS) developed for this purpose were reported in the current study. To test the construct validity of the first version of the RCAS consisting of 29 items, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was performed on the data from 196 seventh-grade secondary school students (who had received robotic coding education already) enrolled in the public schools in a city in the northeastern Turkey. As a result of the EFA, the 22-item five-factor model was extracted. Then, the 22-item five-factor model obtained from EFA was cross-validated using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and the results indicated acceptable model fits where χ²/(df = 197) = 1.827, NFI = .825, CFI = .911, RMSEA = .065. Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient which was calculated to show whether the RCAS is a reliable scale was found to be .91. In sum, the results indicated that RCAS can be used as a reliable and valid instrument to measure secondary school students’ attitude towards robotic coding.