Development of Scientific Mind Scale for Junior High School Students in the Three Southern Border Provinces by Applying Polytomous Item Response Theory

Abstract

The purposes of this research were 1) to construct of scientific mind scale for junior high school students in the three southern border provinces 2) to verify the quality of scientific mind scale for junior high school students in the three southern border provinces by applying polytomous item response theory. The sample were 675 student selected by three-stage random sampling technique. The students selected were studying in junior high school under the jurisdiction of the Secondary Education Office Service Area and Office of the Private Education in the three southern border provinces. Verify the quality by content validity, discrimination and reliability and the quality of the measurement scale by Polytomous Item Response Theory. Moreover, discriminant and difficulty, and test information was conducted via Grade Response Model (GRM).

The findings were; 1. The Measurement Scientific Mind Scale for Lower Secondary School in the Three Southern Border Provinces composed 10 components including 1) curiosity 2) honesty 3) patience, strive and persevere 4) orderliness and prudence 5) responsibility 6) initiative 7) rationality 8) generosity 9) cooperation and 10) good attitude toward science. Each component has 4 indicative behaviors, a total of 40 indicative behaviors. During the construction of the measurement, there were quality checks and improvements until a total of 40 item. The quality measurement scale. Content validity of the scale range from 0.71-1.00, t-test was used to analyze the discrimination. The reliability was 0.893 2. The quality of scientific mind scale for junior high school students in the three southern border provinces by applying polytomous item response theory, Grade Response Model (GRM). The slope parameter(α) is between 0.58-1.45 and the difficulty value The threshold value of each item (β) is the lowest order value, and reliability is 0.9216