Volume: 3 Issue 1 [January 2020]

Article:Examining Factors in 2015 TIMSS Australian Grade 4 Student Questionnaire Regarding Attitudes Towards Science Using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Author: Wai Wai Kyi

Volume: 3, Issue 1; January-2020 ;

DOI: Nor. Am. Aca. Res. 2019 : 3(1) : 210-222; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3632120

Abstract: This study is based on the result from student questionnaire about Grade 4 Australian students’ attitudes towards science. The respondents for this study are (n=6009) students who responded to TIMSS 2015 student questionnaire and the instrument which is chosen for this study is the set of 26 items with 4-point Likert scale. This study employed exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to examine the possible smallest number of factors which are associated with the attitudes towards science; science lessons, science teachers and learning science. According to the result from exploratory factor analysis, it is suggested that 2 key factors can explain students’ attitudes towards science. The two-component solution explained a total of 53.24% of the variance, with Component 1 contributing 41.91% and Component 2 contributing 11.33% respectively. Set of items in factor 1 could be identified and labelled as “Attitudes towards learning science and confidence in science lessons” and those belongs to factor 2 can be labelled as “Attitudes towards science teacher”.

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