The Aiken-Dreger Mathematics Attitude Scale was administered to a sample of 2538 Urban Middle and High School students in northern California. All the schools serve predominantly minority students. To investigate the factorial validity of the scale, the intercorrelation matrix for the twenty items was computed and factor analyzed. Two factors (Enjoyment and Fear) were derived from the varimax rotated matrix. The results of the study provided empirical evidence to support the two-dimensional structure of the Aiken-Dreger Mathematics Attitude Scale.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Aiken, L. R., Jr. and Dreger, R. M. (1961). The effect of attitudes on performance in mathematics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 52, 19-24.
2.
Fennema, E. , and Sherman, J. (1976). Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Attitude Scales. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 6, 31, (MS. No. 1225).
3.
Kaiser, H. F. (1970). A second-generation Little Jiffy. Psychometrika, 35, 401-415.
4.
Michaels, L. A. and Forsyth, R. A. (1977). Construction and validation of an instrument measuring certain attitudes toward mathematics. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 37, 1043-1049.
5.
Silverman, F. L. , Creswell, J. L., Vaughn, L. R. and Brown, R. (1979). The two-dimensional structure of attitude toward mathematics. Louisiana Educational Research Journal, IV, 1, 1-5.
6.
SPSS-X User's guide (1983). New York: McGraw-Hill.