Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-2019

Publication Title

International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education

Volume

17

Abstract

Surveying is a common methodology in science education research, including cross-national and cross-cultural comparisons. The literature surrounding students’ attitudes toward science, in particular, illustrates the prevalence of efforts to translate instruments with the eventual goal of comparing groups. This paper utilizes survey data from a nationally representative cross-sectional study of Qatari students in grades 3 through 12 to frame a discussion around the adequacy and extent to which common adaptations allow comparisons to be made among linguistically or culturally different respondents. The analytic sample contained 2,615 students who responded to a previously validated 32-item instrument, 1,704 of whom completed the survey in Modern Standard Arabic and 911 in English. The purpose of using these data is to scrutinize variation in the performance of the instrument between groups of respondents as determined by language of survey completion and cultural heritage. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was employed to investigate issues of validity associated with the performance of the survey with each group, and to evaluate the appropriateness of using this instrument to make simultaneous comparisons across the distinct groups. Findings underscore the limitations of group comparability that may persist even when issues of translation and adaptation were heavily attended to during instrument development.

Issue

5

First Page

885

Last Page

903

DOI

10.1007/s10763-018-9889-8

ISSN

1573-1774

Rights

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-018-9889-8

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