A Validity and Reliability Study of the Engineering and Engineering Education Attitude Scale (EEAS)

Abstract

In the literature it was not possible to find a proven valid and reliable scale to measure students' attitudes towards the engineering profession and engineering education. Such scale is the objective of the present research. The sample group is composed of 650 students for the first application and 113 students for the second. In order to detect the validity of the scale, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, item factor total correlations, corrected correlations and item discriminations were conducted. In order to assess the reliability of the scale, the level of internal consistency and the stability levels were calculated. EEAS is a five-point Likert-type scale and includes 17 items with two factors. The analyses provided evidence that EEAS is a valid and reliable scale that can be assuredly used to identify students' attitudes towards the engineering profession and the education they receive.