Development of a Thurstone Scale for Measuring Attitudes Toward Adult Education

Abstract

This study reports the development of a Thurstone Scale to measure attitudes toward adult education. Fifty-four expert judges assigned ratings to 116 items in an item pool. Forty items met the criteria for inclusion in the scale and the method of successive intervals was used to calculate the scale item values. The validity of the scale was assessed against five criterion variables in a study in which 28 of the scale items were used with a sample of 263 adult patients in the medical practice of a family physician. Scores on the attitude scale were correlated with years of schooling, social participation, socio-economic status, internal-external locus of control and participation in adult learning activities. Although small in magnitude the correlation coefficients obtained were all in the anticipated direction and were statistically significant beyond the .01 level supporting the concurrent validity of the scale in the study.

The homogeneity of the 40 scale items was tested by factor analysis of responses from 338 adult education participants. The analysis yielded nine factors accounting for 75.1 per cent of the variance and indicated that attitudes toward adult education, as quantified by the scale, are multifactorial. Second order factor analysis revealed three underlying factors with one dominant factor emerging.