Developing a Mathematical Curiosity Scale for Adolescents: Validity and Reliability Study

Abstract

Curiosity offers opportunities for personal growth by instilling a desire to learn, explore, and investigate. Therefore, it is considered essential to encourage curiosity, especially in children and adolescents, for their future lives. Similarly, mathematical curiosity leads the individual to develop in mathematics by directing their desire to learn about mathematics toward discovery. In this context, the study aims to create a scale that provides accurate and reliable measurements that is a valid and reliable Likert-type scale of mathematical curiosity of secondary and high school students. 499 students participated in the exploratory factor analysis, 294 in the confirmatory factor analysis, and 91 in the test-retest analysis. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis, the scale structure with 3 factors and 20 items explains 57.95% of the total variance. The construct validity of the scale was examined through confirmatory factor analysis. The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was found to be 0.903. The reliability coefficients of the sub-dimensions of the scale are .838, .842, and .690, respectively.