Introducing the Thought-Listing Technique to Measure Affective Factors Influencing Attitudes toward Science

Until now, most of tests for attitudes toward science have been conducted through structured questionnaires. The test with structured questionnaire is difficult to exclude the intention of researcher. This study focuses on the need for a more detailed assessment of the sub-elements of attitudes toward science and unstructured open tests. For the purpose of this research, the attitudes toward science were divided into cognitive, behavioral, and affective factors, with a specific focus on affective factors. An unstructured, open, thought-listing test was conducted to measure affective factors influencing attitudes toward science. In the first test, 522 students participated in a thought-listing test on the open topic of “science,” and the correlation between participants’ test scores and science achievements were analyzed. The results revealed that among the categories inside, science area, science learning, science teacher, scientist, the score for science learning had the highest correlation with science achievement. As a result, the second thought-listing test, conducted with 102 middle school students, was limited to the topic of “science learning in the classroom.” The resulting correlation between the test score and science achievement was .257 of Pearson correlation coefficient, which was a higher correlation than that of the first test. This value is similar to or slightly higher than the relationship between science achievement and attitudes toward science found in previous studies. These findings suggest that the thought-listing technique has advantages over structured questionnaires, as it is easier to conduct, excludes researcher bias, and is a valid method to measure affective factors influencing attitudes toward science.