The Design and Application of a Scale to Measure Attitudes of Secondary School Administrators Toward Vocational Education

Abstract

Statement of the Problem: The problem of this study was to design a valid and reliable instrument to measure the attitudes of secondary school administrators toward vocational education. Procedure: The parameters of the attitude to be measured were identified and defined. Based on these definitions, a 96-task universe of content was compiled and evaluated by a jury of vocational administrators and judged complete and relevant to the role of a vocational administrator. Fifty tasks were randomly selected from the universe and related attitude statements were written. In addition to the 50 statements, 7 selected demographic questions were included in the original instrument. A Likert summated rating scale was chosen as the method of measurement. The instrument was pilot tested, revised, and field tested on a population of 200 subjects. Through item analysis, the final instrument was reduced to the 24 highest discriminating attitude statements and 3 demographic questions. Analysis of Data and Findings: An estimate of scale reliability with a coefficient of .88 was computed with the K-R 20 formula. One claim of content validity was made as a result of the completeness of the universe of content. One claim of construct validity was made based on the significant difference in scores between the known groups. Conclusions: Based on the findings in this study, several conclusions were made: 1) The scale items are unidimensional. 2) The scale has a high level of internal consistency. 3) The scale appears to be significantly reliable. 4) The scale has content validity. 5) The scale has construct validity. 6) The demographic questions provided no significant correlational data. 7) The 24-item scale designed in this study appears to be able to measure the attitudes of secondary school administrators toward vocational education. Recommendations: From the general conclusions presented, recommendations related to the scale designed in this study were: 1) Research should be conducted in an effort to replicate the statistical estimates of reliability and validity. 2) Research should be conducted utilizing this instrument to measure the attitudes of secondary school administrators. 3) Research should be conducted to re-evaluate the validity and reliability of this scale incorporating alternate statistical procedures. 4) Research should be conducted to determine if selected demographics beyond those used in this study influence attitude scores.