Development of Self-Efficacy for Argumentation Scale

Abstract

The aim of the study is to develop a “Self-Efficacy Scale for Argumentation” (SEAS). The participants of the study consisted of 879 pre-service teachers. In order to examine construct validity of SEAS, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were utilised. The initial solution of the EFA results revealed that three-factor structure consisting of 24 items called "Effort", "Confidence" and "Determination" for argumentation was obtained. Since the factor-item correlations were not significant for the "Determination" scale (p>.05), the two-factor structure consisting of the “Effort” and “Confidence” for argumentation was validated by the repeated CFA. The accepted fit indices for the repeated CFA results were X2 / sd = 2.62; p