The Development and Confirmatory Factor Analysis of a Scale for the Measurement of Gifted Students Attitude towards Mathematics

Abstract

The present study was aimed at developing an attitude scale and then use it to reveal the attitude of mathematical gifted students’ attitude towards mathematics. In the first phase of the study, an attitude-scale (AS) towards mathematics were designed using the psychometric approach. The AS was composed of seventeen items aimed to measure four factors of attitude: confidence, perceived value of mathematics, interest and commitment, and negative feelings towards mathematics. The AS was piloted with 50 students of a junior secondary III (JS3). Alpha of the AS was found to be 0.93, and the construct validity with the four-factor structure was confirmed with AGFI = 0.99.
In the second phase of the study,  the AS were administered on three groups of JS3 students: the mathematically gifted group (MG), the average group (AV) and the underachievers’ group (U), as identified  in the study. Group sizes for the three groups were 68, 195 and 37 respectively. It was found that MG performed significantly better than both U and AV in all the three factors of mathematical abilities. MG also showed significantly better attitudes than AV in ‘confidence’, ‘value’, ‘interest’ and ‘negative feelings’, and significantly better attitudes than U in ‘interest’.