Development of Decision Making Skills Scale for Primary School Students: Validity and Reliability Study

Abstract

The aim of this study is to develop a scale to determine the decision-making skills of fourth grade students. While developing the scale, dimensions and sub-factors on decision-making skills were reviewed in related literature. The item pool was formed based on this review. The initial form of scale was completed with expert opinions and two separate pilot studies. The final form was applied to 489 fourth grade students from various socio-economic levels in Eskiehir. There were 306 participants for exploratory factor analysis and, 183 participants for confirmatory factor analysis. Maximum variation sampling method, which is one of purposeful sampling methods was used when determining the participants. As the result of exploratory factor analysis, a single factor consisted of 15 items. Item factor loadings ranged from .53 to .74, the Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient was calculated as .89, and the explained variance was calculated as 40.078. After confirmatory factor analysis, the structure was confirmed with the fit values as (sic)2/df: 2.02, RMSEA: .075, RMR: .030, SRMR: .059, NFI: .93, NNFI: .96, CFI: .97, GFI: .88, AGFI: .85. According to the validity and reliability results, it was determined that the scale was valid and reliable. The scale consisted of 15 items in four Likert types (never, occasionally, usually, always). The score can be obtained from the scale ranged from 15 to 60. In addition, no reverse items were included in the scale.