Thesis
Factor analysis and dimensionality assessment of epistemic orientation survey for Elementary science teachers
University of Iowa
Master of Arts (MA), University of Iowa
Spring 2023
DOI: 10.25820/etd.007091
Abstract
This research investigated the factor structures of an Epistemic Orientation Survey (EOS) (Suh et al., 2021), a five-point Likert scale. The EOS has four subdomains and has 44 items in total: Epistemic alignment (EA) measured by 24 items, Classroom authority (CA) measured by 8 items, Epistemic nature of knowledge (ENK) measured by 8 items, and Student ability (SA) measured by 4 items. Item factor analysis (IFA) with WLSMV as an estimator was used to estimate the factor structures for each subdomain at each of four occasions. DIFFTEST was used for model comparisons. It was found that the epistemic alignment (EA) with 24 items had three factors across four occasions: knowledge construction (12 items), knowledge replication (8 items), and correct answers (4) items. By deleting one item having consistently low polychoric correlations across occasions, the classroom authority (CA) with 7 items had a one-factor structure across four occasions. The Epistemic nature of knowledge (ENK) with 8 items had a two-factor structure on occasions 1 and 2, but a one-factor structure on occasions 3 and 4. The student ability (SA) dimension with 4 items consistently had a one-factor structure across time. In sum, the hypothesized four-subdomain EOS should have six subdomains instead.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Factor analysis and dimensionality assessment of epistemic orientation survey for Elementary science teachers
- Creators
- Chenchen Ding
- Contributors
- Lesa Hoffman (Advisor)Gavin Fulmer (Committee Member)Jonathan Templin (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Degree Awarded
- Master of Arts (MA), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Psychological and Quantitative Foundations (Educational Measurement and Statistics)
- Date degree season
- Spring 2023
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.007091
- Number of pages
- vi, 39 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2023 Chenchen Ding
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 04/11/2023
- Date approved
- 04/17/2023
- Description illustrations
- tables, graphs
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 36-37).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
- This study investigated the factor structure of a five-point Likert scale Epistemic Orientation Survey (EOS). The EOS has 44 items in total and has four subdomains: Epistemic alignment (EA) measured by 24 items, Classroom authority (CA) measured by 8 items, Epistemic nature of knowledge (ENK) measured by 8 items, and Student ability (SA) measured by 4 items. (Suh et al., 2022). This study examined the items’ factor structure, which captures the relationship between the latent trait and items. The data used for this study were collected on four occasions. Based on model fit statistics and model comparisons, factor structures were examined for each subdomain per occasion. First, the epistemic alignment (EA) with 24 items had three factors across four occasions: knowledge construction (12 items), knowledge replication (8 items), and correct answers (4) items. Second, by deleting one item having consistently low inter-item correlations across occasions, the classroom authority (CA) with 7 items had a one-factor structure across four occasions. Third, the Epistemic nature of knowledge (ENK) with 8 items had a two-factor structure on occasions 1 and 2, but a one-factor structure on occasions 3 and 4. Finally, the student ability (SA) dimension with 4 items consistently had a one-factor structure across time. In sum, the hypothesized four-subdomain EOS should have six subdomains instead.
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Quantitative Foundations
- Record Identifier
- 9984425392002771
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