Determining the Psychometric Features of Reading Anxiety Scale

Abstract

Reading anxiety is a reaction that is created against reading. It is one of the components that obstruct the process of transforming reading skill into a habit. For this reason, there is the necessity of knowing whether the student has a reading anxiety, or not; and to assign the level of the anxiety if he/she has it. This study aims to develop a scale oriented to determine the levels of reading anxiety in secondary school students. The data was collected through 616 students who were enrolled in 5 different secondary schools. For the development of the assessment instrument, the researcher followed literature review, creation of an item pool, content validity (consulting a specialist), pilot research phases; and made the required reliability calculations. Based on the scores gained through the scale, Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses (EFA and CFA) were applied to test the construct validity of the draft scale. Following the analysis, the researcher created a scale of 14 items. As a result of the factor analysis, the researcher found that the scale had a three-item structure which are “planning the reading process (0, 682-0, 544)”, “components that support reading (0, 821-0, 774) “, “reading comprehension and analysis (0, 763-0, 471)”; and Cronbach’s Alpha internal consistency coefficient was 0, 87. As a result of these analyses, the researcher created a valid and reliable scale to determine reading anxiety in secondary school students.