developing and validating of a malay version chemistry

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EVELOPING AN VALI ATING A MALAY VERSION OF CHEMISTRY SELF CONCEPT QUESTIONNAIRE FOR SECON ARY SCHOOL STU ENTS ADELINE LEONG SUK YEE AP. DR. LAY YOON FAH UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SABAH

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Exploratory Factor Analysis

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DEVELOPING AND VALIDATING OF A MALAY VERSION CHEMISTRY SELF CONCEPT QUESTIONNAIRE FOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

DEVELOPING AND VALIDATING A MALAY VERSION of CHEMISTRY SELF CONCEPT QUESTIONNAIRE FOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

ADELINE LEONG SUK YEEAP. DR. LAY YOON FAHUNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SABAH

INTRODUCTIONRecently, attention has turned to the role of affective domain in student success. The affective domain refers to feeling-based constructs such as attitudes, self efficacy, self concept, values, beliefs, interests, motivation and a degree of acceptance or rejection. In 2005, Bauer highlighted that self concept is an important construct and relevant to educational research. In addition, Marsh and Yeung (1997) present a strong empirical arguments that self concept leads to higher academic achievement.

Self-concept is generally defined as an individuals perception of self and perceptions based on self-knowledge and evaluation of values formed through experiences with the environment, interactions with significant others (i.e., parents, teachers or peers) and attributions of his or her own behaviour (Marsh and Shavelson, 1985). To translate the general definition into something operational, Shavelson and Bolus (1982) defined self concept as perceptions of ability in different areas. INTRODUCTIONIn particular, chemistry self concept is referred to the individual perception or belief in his or her ability to do well in chemistry. A persons belief in his or her ability to do well in chemistry has value with regard to a persons willingness to take part in more achievement-related behaviours, which might include completing homework, studying for tests and participating in class activities (Valentine et al. 2004).

INTRODUCTIONChemistry self concept used in this study is operationally defined as the competence and commitment of the students to learn chemistry, and involvement as well as their interest in chemistry. There are two dimensions of self-concept, first is confidence which assessing students' perceptions of their competence in chemistry and second is efforts focus on the commitment, involvement and interest of students in chemistry.

INTRODUCTIONAccording to the literature, a few instruments have been developed by researchers to measure students chemistry self concepts. Among the instruments was Chemistry Self Concept Inventory (CSCI) developed by Bauer (2005) for college-age adolescent chemistry students Nieswandt (2006) in her study on the relationship between affective variables (chemistry self concept, attitude toward chemistry and interest) and cognitive (understanding of chemical concepts), measured chemistry self concept using a questionnaire adapted from Graber (1992) which adapted the study of Jerusalem (1984). Chemistry self concept defined in this study is students knowledge and perceptions about themselves in achievement or performance situation in the chemistry classroom.INTRODUCTIONLack of instruments to assess chemistry self concept among secondary school students, in particular in Malaysian context , justified the need to develop a Malay version of Chemistry Self Concept Questionnaire for secondary students in Malaysia. This is because chemistry self concept leads to higher academic achievement (Marsh and Yeung, 1997), level of engagement, and persistence in classroom activities (Nieswandt, 2006). In an effort to fill the research gap, this study attempt to develop a Malay version Chemistry Self Concept Questionnaire for secondary students which was modified and translated from the Academic Self Concept Questionnaire (Liu and Wang, 2005).

INTRODUCTIONRESEARCH OBJECTIVETo develop and validate a Malay version of Chemistry Self Concept Questionnaire to measure chemistry self concept among Malaysia secondary students.

METHODS(i) sampleSThe data was collected from a total 327 Form 4 chemistry students randomly-selected from 13 secondary school in Sabah, Malaysia. Majority of the respondents were female students that comprise about 219 respondents, whereas the remaining 108 respondents were male students.Out of the 327 respondents, 55.7% (182 students) were from the urban school whereas the remaining 44.3% (145 students) were from the rural school.(ii) InstrumentThe original self-constructed Academic Self Concept Questionnaire (ACSQ) was developed by Liu and Wang (2005). It comprised two 10-item subscales: students confidence and students effort. On this questionnaire students are asked to respond each item by using a 4-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree) in terms of their feeling and perceptions about their academic competence and their commitment to and involvement and interest in schoolwork generally.(ii) InstrumentThe items of the two subscales of the ACSQ were adapted and modified into Malay version, in order to assess students chemistry self concept. The students confidence subscale consisted of ten items assessing students' perceptions of their competence in chemistry subject. The students effort subscale consisted ten items concerning students commitment, involvement and interest in chemistry subject. For the purpose of this study, all the items were adapted in such a way that student will reflect their responce based on Chemistry class(ii) InstrumentORIGINAL ITEM(academic self concept)MODIFIED ITEM(specific domain-chemistry self concept)I can follow the lessons easilyI can follow chemistry lessons easily.

I day-dream a lot in classI day-dream a lot in chemistry class

(ii) InstrumentIn this study, students responded on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) to enable students to give response freely. Likert scale with an even number will force the students to choose whether to agree or disagree, even they feel hesitant and unsure about the statement given. It will creates measurement error and data collected less valid (Chua Yan Piaw, 2011).

(ii) InstrumentResearcher has translated ASCQ into Malay language through back translation. According to Behling and Law (2000), this method is the most common method used to determine the relationship between the original and translated instruments. The 20 items Academic Self Concept questionnaire Liu and Wang (2005) was validated because there was no literature that it had ever been validated on measuring domain specific self concept, which is Chemistry Self Concept among secondary students in Malaysia. When an instrument is modified and applied to new populations it is necessary to establish its validity and reliability in that setting (Byrne, 2002).

14(iii) Statistical Analysis

The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 19 for Windows. Factor structure for each variable was constructed separately using exploratory factor analysis based on Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) extraction method with oblique rotation (i.e. Direct Oblimin). Loadings < .30 were suppressed since the sample size consists of 327 respondents (Hair et. al, 2010).The main purpose of this procedure was to group the acceptable subscales into meaningful distinct factor.Internal consistency reliabilities for each dimension were examined using Cronbachs alpha.Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) is a statistical technique that can be utilized to group the acceptable subscales into meaningful distinct variables (Henson and Roberts, 2006). This analysis was a multivariate statistical approach that can be used in the validity, refinement and evaluation of measurement used in the study (Hair, et al., 2010; Williams et al., 2010). The purpose of conducted factor analysis is to present a construct validity evidence for Academic Self Concept Questionnaire in chemistry domain for Malay version.

(iii) Statistical Analysis

Results(i) Exploratory Factor AnalysisVariableComponent NumberInitial Eigenvalue(Kaisers Criteria)Parallel Analysis Simulation EigenvalueDecisionSelf-Efficacy Concept15.4941.472Accept21.6861.380Accept31.2461.319Reject41.1421.264Reject51.0231.211Reject60.9451.162RejectResults(i) Exploratory Factor AnalysisTable 1: Multiple criteria for factors to be extracted for Chemistry Self Concept

Referring to Table 1, it is shows the results of the multiple criterias for the number of variables need to extract. From the Kaisers criteria, it should be five factors need to extracted, however results of parallel analysis indicated that only two factors should be extracted due to the first two Kaisers eigenvalue for the first two self-efficacy concept measurement have exceeded the Parallel Analysis simulation eigenvalue. Therefore, the analyses were rerun again using the same extraction and rotation methods, but its constrained to the two factors solution.

Results & discussion(i) Exploratory Factor AnalysisAfter constrained to the two factors solution, which is same as the original number of factors (Table 2), the cumulative percentage variance extracted from these measurements was 31.50%. Out of 20 items, 18 items were exceed the threshold .30 of factor loading for indicating a practically significant and valid, whereas two items were removed from this analysis due to the factor loading less than .30, which is item 19 If i work hard, i think i can continue my studies in chemistry at college or university and item 28 I often do my chemistry home work without thinking.There are a few possible reasons for the poor fit of the items. For item 28, this item also been removed from first validation of Liu and Wang (2005) and in the second validation by Tan and Yates (2007) using Rasch modelling because of poor in-fit statistics. Item 19 If i work hard, i think i can continue my studies in chemistry at college or university) is the longest question in the questionnaire. Question that are too long and complex may caused confusion for students to process the sentences (Chua Yan Piaw, 2011).

The two factors under Chemistry Self Concept measurement are named confidence keyakinan and effort usaha. The internal consistency of the extracted variables was acceptable reliable. The Cronbachs Alpha for confidence and effort were at the acceptable reliable of the set of grouped items (.763 and .800 respectively).According to, McCoach et al. (2013) for measuring affective domains, values at or above 0.7 are considered strong.

Results & discussion(i) reliabilityconclusionThe results of the present study showed that the modified and translated academic self concept scale by Liu and Wang (2005) was deemed adequate in collecting information about chemistry self concept among secondary students. The instrument displayed a good psychometric performance both in terms of reliability and validity. The high internal consistency of the total and subscales of the instrument indicated a high level of homogeneity among items in the scale. Factor analysis of the 20 items, generated two factors. It confirmed the two factors structured proposed by Liu and Wang (2005) for academic self concept was same for domain-specific self concept (ie: chemistry self concept). Overall, the Malay version of Chemistry Self Concept questionnaire may enable researchers and teachers to identify chemistry self concept among secondary students in Malaysia. For future research, researcher plan to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to determine whether the data confirmed the model.

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