ICCS 2009 Technical Report - IEA

Students’ perceptions of identity, citizenship, and culture in AsiaThree scales were derived from questions that asked students to give their perceptions oftraditional culture, good citizenship, and Asian identity. The reliabilities of these scales, each ofwhich is included in the Asian ICCS student database, are reported in Table 12.62.• Students’ attitudes toward the preservation of traditional culture (TRADCL);• Students’ sense of Asian identity (ASIAID);• Students’ perceptions of good citizenship (ASIACIT).Table 12.62: Scale reliabilities for scales reflecting students’ perceptions of identity, citizenship, and culturein AsiaCountry Traditional Culture Asian Identity Good CitizenshipChinese Taipei 0.77 0.90 0.80Hong Kong SAR 0.76 0.86 0.79Indonesia 0.65 0.84 0.60Korea, Republic of 0.69 0.87 0.76Thailand 0.69 0.78 0.69ICCS average 0.75 0.85 0.73Question 3 of the questionnaire for students participating in the Asian ICCS regional moduleasked these students to signal their level of agreement (“strongly agree,” “agree,” “disagree,”“strongly disagree”) with four statements about preserving the traditional culture of theirrespective countries. All four statement items were used to derive the scale students’ attitudestoward the preservation of traditional culture (TRADCL). The scale reliability was 0.75 for the Asiansample, and the national reliabilities ranged from 0.65 to 0.77 (see Table 12.62). Table 12.63shows the item wording as well as the item parameters that were used for scaling. The highervalues on this scale reflect positive attitudes toward preservation of traditional culture.Question 6 asked students to indicate their level of agreement (“strongly agree” to “stronglydisagree”) with statements about the Asian region and their sense of identity as Asians. Seven ofthe question items were used to construct the scale students’ sense of Asian identity (ASIAID); thehigher scale scores corresponded to a greater sense of Asian identity. The scale reliability was0.85 for the pooled ICCS sample, and the national reliabilities ranged from 0.78 to 0.90 (seeTable 12.62). Table 12.63 presents the item parameters that were used for scaling.In Question 7, students were presented with seven statements indicating possible characteristicsof good citizenship. Students were asked to rate their level of agreement with each of thestatements (“strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”). The seven items were used to derive thescale students’ perceptions of good citizenship (ASIACIT), which had a scale reliability of 0.73 forthe Asian sample and national reliabilities ranging from 0.60 to 0.80 (see Table 12.52). Table12.53 shows the item wording and the item parameters that were used for scaling. Highervalues on this scale reflect stronger agreement with the listed requirements for being a goodcitizen.Figure 12.33 shows the results of the confirmatory factor analysis for these item sets. TheRMSEA suggested a close item fit, but both the NNFI and CFI indicated some lack of fit forthe three-factor solution. The relatively low factor loading for Item AS2P07B (“a person whoobeys the law but does not behave morally is not a good citizen”), for which only 25 percent ofits variance was explained by the underlying construct, suggests that the item did not measurethe latent factor ASIACIT (characteristics of a good citizen) to the same extent as the otheritems in the scale did. Strong positive correlations were observed between the three latentfactors; these ranged from 0.67 to 0.70.SCALING PROCEDURES FOR ICCS questionnaire ITEMS253