Development and validation of academic interest scale for junior secondary school students in Akwa Ibom State.

Abstract

The researchers developed an instrument for measuring academic interest level of Junior Secondary School three (JSS3) students in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. A survey research design was adopted. Convenience sampling technique was used to select three urban schools and two rural schools for the final phase (validation) of the study. From each of the five schools, 40 JSS3 students were selected through simple random sampling technique to form the sample. At the initial stage of item construction, 60 items were generated and pretested on 50 students from the population. The scores were subjected to item mean and discrimination analyses which led to the selection of 40 items. The scale with 40 items was administered to 400 students from the population. Items with corrected item-total correlations of0.7 and above were selected into the final version of the scale. The psychometric properties of the Academic Interest Scale (AIS) were established using test-retest, Cronbach alpha and split-half for reliability, while convergent and discriminant validities, itemtotal correlations, and communalities of items were examined for construct validity. Findings revealed that the scale is valid and reliable. It was recommended that the scale be used in measuring junior secondary school students' academic interest.