JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING VOL. 23, NO. 1, PP. 21-25 (1986)

THE STUDENT OPINION SURVEY IN CHEMISTRY: SOME CROSS-NATIONAL DATA

R. A. SCHlBECI

School of Education, Murdoch University, Murdoch, Western Australia 6150

Abstract

This paper reports data on student attitudes to chemistry obtained with the Student Opinion Survey in Chemistry (SOSC). These data were obtained as part of an evaluation of the Australian Academy of Science’s School Chemistry Project, a project to develop chemistry curriculum materials for the last two years of high school in Australia. The results obtained in the present study are compared with those reported by Heikkinen (“A study of factors influencing student attitudes towards the study of high school chemistry,” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Uni- versity of Maryland, 1973). The potential usefulness of using the same instrument in cross- national studies is discussed.

There have been many calls for a renewal in science eduation (Klopfer, 1983). In Australia, in particular, concern has been expressed by the chemical education community about the teaching of chemistry in high schools (grades 7-12): see, for example, Sleet and Stem (1983). The Australian Academy of Science responded to this concern by initiating an inquiry into the teaching of chemistry; as a result, a chemistry syllabus was published (Australian Academy of Science, 1979). The Acad- emy accepted a recommendation that a chemistry program be developed, based on this published syllabus, and decided to sponsor the prcduction of chemistry cumculum materials for students in the final two years of high school. This effort would be known as the School Chemistry Project (SCP). A description of the SCP is available (Schibeci and Bucat, 1985) for the interested reader. Subsequently, an agency of the Australian federal government was approached to provide support for the evaluation of some of the trial editions of units of the SCP materials. This agency agreed to provide funds which allowed the first group of units to be trialled in Australian schools.

As part of the formative evaluation of the initial group of SCP units, data were gathered on student attitudes to chemistry. The instrument used was a slightly modified version of the Student Opinion Survey in Chemistry (SOSC) developed as part of the Interdisciplinary Approaches to Chemistry Project in the U.S.A. (Heikkinen, 1973).

The purpose of this paper is to report some cross-national data on the SOSC.

8 1986 by the National Association for Research in Science Teaching Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0022-4308/86/01002 1-05$04.00

22 SCHIBECI

The Student Opinion Survey in Chemistry (SOSC)

Utility of Cross-National Data

A major problem in science education is the proliferation of instruments which have been used to measure student attitudes to science (Mayer and Richmond, 1982; Munby, 1980). Many of these instruments have been severely criticized on conceptual and empirical grounds (Gardner, 1975; Munby, 1980; Schibeci, 1984). Many of the instruments are designed specifically for one study, never to be used again. The international research effort in the area of student attitudes to science is considerable, as revealed by a recent review of the literature (Schibeci, 1984). It would be useful, therefore, to have a set of instruments available which could be used (with minor modifications only) in different countries. If the same (or very similar) instruments were used, it would allow some direct comparisons of student attainment which would otherwise not be possible.

There are thus two reasons for examining more closely currently available in- struments. The first is that there is already available a large pool of attitude instru- ments, and research may be fruitfully directed into the validation of these scales. The second reason is to allow the more direct comparison of student attainment in different countries, a task more validly pursued when the same (or a very similar) instrument is used.

The SOSC For these reasons, therefore, it was decided to seek a suitable instrument which

had been used with a population similar to the intended one in Australia. The Student Opinion Survey in Chemistry (Heikkinen, 1973) had been developed as part of the evaluation program for the Inter-disciplinary Approach to Chemistry (IAC), and was subsequently published (Heikkinen, 1974). The SOSC appeared to be suitable for use in the formative evaluation study of the Academy of Science’s School Chemistry Project in Australia.

The instrument has ten unfavorably-worded and ten favorably-worded statements, selected from an original pool of 40 items (Heikkinen, 1973). In order to make an assessment of the students’ attitudes, a score of five was assigned to the most favorable response and a score of one to the least favorable. Hence, the most favorable (or highest possible) score is 100 and the lowest (or most unfavorable) possible score is 20. A score of 60 for the SOSC is considered neutral and indicates that a student is undecided about his or her feelings towards chemistry.

The instrument used in the present study was a slightly modified version of the SOSC. The revision included the replacement of Question 12 and several minor changes in wording to make the instrument more suitable for use with Australian secondary school students. Students were asked to respond on a five-point scale of “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree” to each of 20 statements related to learning chemistry.

The Samples

Heikkinen (1973) described the students in his sample as “typical first-year high school chemistry students, predominantly eleventh-grade uunior year) individuals” (p.99). In all the schools in his sample, chemistry was an elective subject. The students

OPINION SURVEY IN CHEMISTRY 23

TABLE I Summary Statistics for SOSC”

Cronbach’s n M SD Minimum Maximum alpha

Block 1 87 73.4 10.8 42 95 0.90 Block 2 85 69.6 12.4 41 95 0.92 Block 3 130 71.2 11.8 33 96 0.92 Block 4 78 62.3 17.4 20 97 0.95

Overall results 380 69.5 13.6 20 97 0.93 “Note: The four “blocks” refer to the following units: Block 1: “Metals”; Block 2: “Oxidation-

Reduction,” “Electrolysis,” and “Electro-chemical cells”; Block 3: “Structure of Materials”; Block 4: “Mineral Resources” and “Metal Extraction and Purification.”

were drawn from mostly suburban Maryland, but a few rural high schools were included. The data he reported for the SOSC were based on responses of 577 randomly selected students.

The sample of students in Australia were drawn from each Australian state. Thus, the 380 Australian students were possibly a more representative sample of their coun- try’s population than were the students in Heikkinens (1973) study. Nevertheless, as in Heikkinen’s investigation, the Australian students were in grade eleven, and in each school chemistry was an elective subject.

Results and Discussion

In the present study, the SOSC was administered at the end of each of four blocks of units of the School Chemistry Project. Thus, results are available for each of the four testing occasions in which the SOSC was used. Summary statistics for these administrations of the SOSC are given in Table I.

It will be seen from Table I that the overall mean and standard deviation for the SOSC were 69.5 and 13.6, respectively. These values are similar to those reported by Heikkinen (1973) for his sample: a mean of 69.6 and a standard deviation of 15.6.

Table I also reveals that, on each testing occasion, the SOSC was computed to have a high internal consistency, with values of Cronbach’s alpha ranging from 0.90 to 0.95. Similarly, Heikkinen (1973) reported high values for internal consistency, with no value for Cronbach alpha below 0.90. It is clear that these values of Cron- bach’s alpha were satisfactory for a 20-item test. In addition, he reported that the mid- year versus posttest SOSC correlation yielded a high value (r = 0.83), ‘‘suggesting that the instrument can produce relatively reliable results in a test-retest sense” (p. 134).

Item-remainder correlation coefficients were also computed in the present study: values ranged from 0.47 to 0.76, except for a value of 0.33 for Item 8, “I disliked this unit on [home of unit inserted].” Heikkinen (1973) did not report corresponding data. He indicated only that the ‘‘estimated average inter-item correlation’ ’ coefficient was 0.43 and 0.50 for each of the two occasions on which the SOSC was administered.

Heikkinen (1973) did not report any factor analytic data on the SOSC. As this procedure is one means for validating an attitude instrument, the student response data were factor analyzed (principal components analysis with a varimax rotation) using

24 SCHIBECI

TABLE II Exploratory Factor Analysis of SOSC Data: Factor Loadings

(n = 380)”

Factor Item I II III h2

1 0.82 0.73 3 0.62 0.44 5 0.41 0.68 0.66 6 0.46 0.65 0.67 7 0.39 0.43 0.41 9 0.42 0.53 0.57

13 0.44 0.52 0.49 18 0.40 0.54 0.35 0.58 2 0.62 0.41 4 0.60 0.37 0.52

10 0.77 0.66 12 0.37 0.35 0.31 14 0.61 0.38 0.53 15 0.59 0.38 0.53 16 0.51 0.59 0.51 19 0.57 0.52 0.64 20 0.57 0.36 0.48

8 0.70 0.50 11 0.70 0.56 17 0.68 0.57

Variance 5% 80.8 11.5 7.6

‘Note: Only loadings with values >0.30 are given.

SPSS (Nie, Hull, Jenkins, Steinbrenner, & Bent, 1975). Three factors emerged from this analysis (Table 11). However, Factor I accounts for approximately 81% of the variance. These data, together with the high values for Cronbach’s alpha, suggests that the SOSC is essentially a unidimensional instrument. Thus, there is justification in calculating a simple sum of responses on individual items as an index of a student’s attitude to chemistry.

It should be mentioned that a second study in the U.S.A. in which the SOSC was used was located. This study, by Sherwood and Herron (1976), reported values for summary statistics which were similar to those given by Heikkinen (1973) and in the present study. However, the Sherwood and Herron study gave no details of the sample used. In this latter study, a Remmers scale was used in addition to the SOSC. The authors claimed that “the Remmers Scale . . . may not be as sensitive as the SOSC scale” (p. 473).

As pointed out earlier, more research could be fruitfully directed towards vali- dating existing instruments, rather than developing new ones. Further, it would be useful to have available instruments which could be used across countries in order to allow more direct comparisons of student attainment.

The data reported in this paper, together with the data reported in the earlier studies in the U.S.A. suggest that, on psychometric grounds at least, the SOSC is a worthy candidate if researchers are seeking an instrument to assess student attitudes to chemistry. Further, it appears that the SOSC is potentially useful in cross-national research in chemical education.

OPINION SURVEY IN CHEMISTRY 25

References

Austrailian Academy of Science (1979). Chemistry for Australian secondary stu- dents: A recommended course of study. (Report no. 230). Canberra: AAS.

Gardner, P. L. (1975). Attitude measurement: A critique of some recent research. Educational Research, 17, 101-109.

Heikkinen, H. W. (1973). A study of factors influencing student attitudes towards the study of high school chemistry. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland.

Heikkinen, H. (1974). Student opinion survey in chemistry. New York: McGraw- Hill.

Klopfer, L. E. (1983). Editorial: Discussions of issues in science education. Science Education, 67, 1.

Mayer, V. J., & Richmond, J. M. (1982). An overview of assessment instruments in science. Science Education, 66, 49-66.

Munby, H. (1980). An evalution of instruments which measure attitudes to sci- ence. In C. P. McFadden (Ed.), World trends in science education (pp. 266-275). Halifax, Nova Scotia: Atlantic Institute of Education.

Nie, N. H., Hull, C. H., Jenkins, J. C., Steinbrenner, K. , and Bent, D. H. (1975). Statistical package for the social sciences (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw- Hill.

Schibeci, R. A. (1984). Attitudes to science: An update. Studies in Science Ed- ucation, 11, 26-59.

Schibeci, R. A., & Bucat, R. B. (1985). Earth, air, fire and water: The Australian Academy of Science School Chemistry Project. Journal of Chemical Education, in press.

Sherwood, R. D., & Herron, J. D. (1976). Effect on student attitude: individ- ualized I.A.C. versus conventional high school chemistry. Science Education, 60,

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Manuscript accepted April 2, 1985