ICCS 2009 Technical Report - IEA

Students’ civic-related self-beliefsTable 12.9 reports the three scales, and their reliabilities, that were derived from questionsregarding students’ civic-related self-beliefs. The three scales, which are included in the ICCSstudent database, are:• Students’ interest in politics and social issues (INTPOLS);• Students’ sense of internal political efficacy (INPOLEF);• Students’ citizenship self-efficacy (CITEFF).Question 22 required students to indicate their interest in a series of issues. Item responsesincluded “very interested,” “quite interested,” “not very interested,” “not interested at all.” Fiveof the question items were used to construct the scale students’ interest in politics and social issues(INTPOLS); the higher scale scores correspond to greater interest in politics and social issues.The reliability of this scale (Cronbach’s alpha) was 0.86 for the pooled ICCS sample. Countryreliabilities ranged from 0.75 to 0.92 (see Table 12.7). Table 12.10 shows the item parametersthat were used for scaling.Question 23 asked students to state their degree of agreement or disagreement with a seriesof statements about their thoughts on political matters. Six items from this question were usedto form the scale students’ sense of internal political efficacy (INPOLEF), which had a reliability(Cronbach’s alpha) of 0.84 for the pooled ICCS sample and ranged from 0.72 to 0.89 (seeTable 12.9). Table 12.10 shows the item wording as well as the item parameters that were usedfor scaling. The higher values on this scale reflect a higher sense of internal political efficacy.Question 31 of the student questionnaire asked students how well they thought they wouldperform several listed activities (“very well,” “fairly well,” “not very well,” “not at all”). Together,the question items derived the scale students’ citizenship self-efficacy (CITEFF), and the highervalues on it denote higher levels of confidence with respect to this form of self-efficacy. Thereliability of this scale (Cronbach’s alpha) was 0.82 for the pooled ICCS sample, and thecountry reliabilities ranged from 0.70 to 0.88 (see Table 12.9). Table 12.10 shows the itemparameters that were used for scaling.Figure 12.7 sets out the results from the confirmatory factor analysis for the three item sets.All three fit indices suggested a satisfactory model fit, and the factor loadings indicatedgood measurement qualities for the items that were used to derive indices of the three latentconstructs. High correlations emerged between the three latent factors, in particular betweenINTPOLS (student interest in political and social issues) and INPOLEF (internal politicalefficacy).Students’ attitudes toward equal rightsThe three scales (and their reliabilities) that were derived from questions regarding students’attitudes toward equal rights are reported in Table 12.11 and included in the ICCS studentdatabase. They are:• Students’ attitudes toward gender equality (GENEQL);• Students’ attitudes toward equal rights for all ethnic/racial groups (ETHRGHT);• Students’ attitudes toward equal rights for immigrants (IMMRGHT).Question 24 presented a series of items about the roles of women and men in society. Studentswere asked to indicate their level of agreement (ranging from “strongly agree” to “stronglydisagree”) with each statement. The first six question items were used to form the scale students’attitudes toward gender equality (GENEQL), the reliability of which (Cronbach’s alpha) was 0.79for the pooled ICCS sample. The country reliabilities ranged from 0.56 to 0.88 (see Table12.11).SCALING PROCEDURES FOR ICCS questionnaire ITEMS177