Students’ Attitudes and Predespositions Towards Physical Education

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an instrument, which was grounded in both attitude theory and psychometric theory and could assess students’ attitudes towards physical education (PE), the pro-cess of evaluation in PE and the differences due to independent variables. A total of 638 students (327 boys, 311 girls) participated of fifth and sixth grade of elementary school, seventh and tenth grade of middle school. Two different scales of attitudes toward PE were selected for this instrument, the one developed by Phillips and Silverman (2012), which includes “cognition” and “affect” factors and the Physical Education Predisposition Scale by Hilland, Stratton, Vinson and Fairclough (2009), which includes ‘‘perceived PE worth’’ and ‘‘perceived PE ability’’ factors. In addition, a scale has been developed to examine students' attitudes towards evaluation in PE. Principal component analysis was conducted to provide factorial validity evidence for the measure. Cronbach’s alpha was employed to determine internal consistency and overall score and factor reliability. Pearson’s product-moment coefficients were used to assess the correlation between the resultant factors. All factors demon-strated acceptable internal consistency (α > .70) and items on each factor fit the theoretical model and had appropriate factor loadings. Results demonstrate that there was a strong positive correlation between the cognitive and affective factor and the factor attitude towards assessment in physical education. Further correlations by year group and post hoc test revealed that all attitude and assessment factors were significantly higher in Year 5, 6 and 7 compared to Year 9 students. There were no significant differences between the gender of the students and the gender of the physical education teachers. The high validity and reliability of the values of this new instrument, provides a strong base for future research on students’ attitudes of upper elementary and middle school towards physical education to be conducted.