Gathering Psychometric Evidence for ASCIv2 to Support Cross-Cultural Attitudinal Studies for College Chemistry Programs - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 173

the programs that these specialist universities can offer, compared to the compre-
hensive and mixed sex classes in both Australia and the USA.
Research on student attitude has been undertaken in Saudi Arabia with targets as
diverse as computers, smoking, eating, and so on (Al-Khaldi & AlJabri, 1998 ).
There is only one study concerning attitude performed in a school chemistry
education context from Saudi Arabia (Harty & Alfaleh, 1983 ). The authors reported
very promising results that high school students in a small-group laboratory setting
performed better on a chemistry achievement test and exhibited more positive
attitudes toward science than those in the traditional setting. Unfortunately, there
are no accessible follow-up publications in English on Saudi Arabian students '
attitudes in the area of chemistry, though there are some in Arabic (Albaz, 2007 ;
Albusylee, Sadieg, & Abdukader, 1990 ; Balfagheh, 2001 ; Fatallah, 2009 ; Hijazi,
2008 ). Therefore, this field is in its infancy in Saudi Arabia and needs to be further
explored. This study is intended to contribute to understanding how attitude instru-
ments function for college students in a Saudi Arabian context to provide a
preliminary attitude comparison with student samples in Australia and the USA.
The findings from this study can provide an example to establish evidence for a
robust instrument; otherwise it is uncertain whether research findings are just an
artifact of the instrumentation. With more knowledge of an instrument s function,

the chemistry education community can use the tool with more confidence to
support further research investigations, such as how attitude relates to student
achievement and the school curriculum.

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1.2 Measurement for Attitude

With increased international collaboration in educational reform, there is a need to
develop measurement tools with reported psychometric evidence for cross-cultural
comparison (Abell, Springer, & Kamata, 2009 ; van de Vijver & Tanzer, 2004 ).
Valid instrument scores are critical to evaluate the effectiveness of educational
programs, to inform instruction, and to help make data-driven educational policies.
Psychometric evidence of an instrument

s function in the specific context is nec-
essary, to interpret an instrument score, to support claims based on instrument
scores, and to meet the current standards for educational and psychological testing
(AERA, APA, & NCME, 1999 ). Accordingly, a conceptual framework for evi-
dence sources was proposed in the area of chemical education (Arjoon, Xu, &
Lewis, 2013 ). Validity refers to “the degree to which evidence and theory support
the interpretations of test scores entailed by proposed uses of tests” (AERA et al.,
1999 ). Reliability is necessary for validity and refers to the consistency of a
measure and scoring procedures. Reliability evidence can be gathered based on
temporal stability, which requires the same respondents to take the test more than
once, and internal consistency, which involves examining the degree to which
responses to related items correlate with one another. Validity evidence can be

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