The adaptation of the reader self-perception scale to the 4th and 5th grade Turkish students

Abstract

Problem statement: The affective dimension of reading instruction like self-efficacy has been highly studied, and a need for the assessment of this dimension has emerged in recent years. After some effort, the Reader Self-Perception Scale (RSPS) was developed to meet this need. Purpose of the Study: The purpose of this study is to adapt the RSPS into Turkish to make it available to the researchers and teachers in Turkey. Methods: The original RSPS consists of one general item and thirty-two subsequent items that embody the four scales: Progress, Observational Comparison, Social Feedback and Physiological States. To adapt the 33-item RSPS, the scale was translated into Turkish under the supervision of some scholars from the field of education. Later, a validity and reliability study analysis was carried out. The quantitative data were collected from 629 4th and 5th graders enrolled in five primary schools in Burdur, Denizli and izmir by using the RSPS and the Attitude Scale towards Reading. For the data analysis, the factor structure of the Turkish form of the RSPS, the Cronbach's Alpha coefficients of the scale and the subscales, test-retest and concurrent validity correlations were measured. Findings and Results: The analyses of the collected data indicated some findings. First, the factor analysis revealed the need for excluding two items from the original scale. Second, the exploratory factor analysis, using the principal component analysis and varimax rotation, and the confirmatory factor analysis were conducted. Five independent factors, explaining 51.98% of total variance, with the eigenvalue over 1.00 have been found. The result of the confirmatory factor analysis also confirmed the five-factor model. Third, the Cronbach's Alpha values of the scale and the subscales proved the high reliability for the adapted scale. Fourth, the itemtotal correlations of the scale acceptably ranged between .37 and .68. Finally, the test-retest validity and the concurrent validity with the Attitude Scale displayed significant correlations. Conclusions and Recommendations: Findings suggest that the adapted RSPS is a valid and reliable instrument for researchers and teachers in collecting descriptive data from students. Since the RSPS was tested with only the 4th and 5th grade students, additional studies are required to adapt the scale to other grades and to examine the changes in the 4th and 5th grade students' self-perception levels regarding the reading process.