ICCS 2009 Technical Report - IEA

Table 12.42: Reliabilities for scales reflecting students’ reports on activities related to EuropeCountry Particip. in Groups/Activities Learning Opps. Particip. in CommunicationAustria 0.72 0.83 0.85Belgium (Flemish) 0.68 0.83 0.84Bulgaria 0.83 N/A 0.84Cyprus 0.80 0.85 0.85Czech Republic 0.71 0.82 0.84Denmark 0.64 0.78 0.85England 0.73 0.83 0.87Estonia 0.71 0.84 0.85Finland 0.67 0.85 0.87Greece 0.82 0.82 0.81Ireland 0.70 0.84 0.84Italy 0.69 0.79 0.82Latvia 0.74 0.78 0.83Liechtenstein 0.69 0.86 0.85Lithuania 0.73 0.81 0.83Luxembourg 0.71 0.84 0.85Malta 0.75 0.84 0.82Netherlands 0.63 0.78 0.83Poland 0.77 0.85 0.86Slovak Republic 0.72 0.82 0.85Slovenia 0.73 0.85 0.85Spain 0.77 0.85 0.82Sweden 0.73 0.85 0.86Switzerland 0.65 0.80 0.83ICCS average 0.73 0.83 0.85Figure 12.23 presents the results of the confirmatory factor analysis of these three itemsets. The RMSEA suggested a good fit for the model, but the NNFI and CFI indicated aconsiderable lack of fit. Most factor loadings indicated high measurement reliability at theitem level. The correlations between the three latent factors were positive and ranged from0.29 to 0.41.Students’ attitudes toward learning of European languagesStudents were asked in Question 7 to indicate their level of agreement with a series ofstatements concerning the learning of languages spoken in other European countries. Theresponse categories were “strongly agree,” “agree,” “disagree,” “strongly disagree.” The sixitems associated with the question were used to construct the scale students’ attitudes towardEuropean language learning (EUATLANG). Higher EUATLANG scores on the scale denote greateragreement with the notion that learning other European languages is important. This scalehad a reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of 0.82 for the pooled ICCS sample, and the nationalreliabilities ranged from 0.77 to 0.85 (see Table 12.44). Table 12.45 shows the item parametersthat were used for scaling.228ICCS 2009 technical report