Developing an Orienteering Attitudes Scale: A Validity and Reliability Study

Abstract

Orienteering is an increasingly popular sport activity. Because orienteering is believed to improve cognitive, affective, and behavioural skills, it is used in many classes such as social studies, geography, and physical education. It is, thus, of critical importance to know attitudes towards orienteering, especially among middle school students to use orienteering more effectively and efficiently. This study aimed to develop a reliable and valid scale to measure middle school students’ attitudes towards orienteering. To this end, the study sampled 600 students who were attending fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades during the fall term of the 2019-2020 academic year. Expert opinion was sought for the content and face validity of the scale. The results of the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) conducted for the construct validity indicated a three-factor structure consisting of sixteen items, which accounted for 65.06% of the total variance. The factor loadings of the scale items ranged from 0.61 and 0.94. According to the results of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the goodness of fit indices (GFI) were as follows: χ2/df = 2.37, RMSEA = 0.07, GFI = 0.91, AGFI = 0.88, SRMR = 0.05, RFI = 0.95, CFI =0.97, IFI = 0.97, NFI = 0.96, and NNFI = 0.97. The reliability of the scale was tested using the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, the test-retest reliability coefficient, the significance of the correlation coefficients for the scale and subscales, and the upper and lower 27%. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was found to be .92 for the total scale, .89 for the affective subscale, .89 for the behavioural subscale, and .72 for the cognitive subscale. Based on the findings, the Orienteering Attitudes Scale is a valid and reliable measure and can be used to measure middle school students’ attitudes towards orienteering.