The adaptation of the views about scientific ınquiry questionnaire: a validity and reliability study

Abstract

This study aimed to adapt views about scientific inquiry questionnaire in to Turkish, originally developed by Lederman et al (2014), and to explore preservice teachers’ views about scientific inquiry. The questionnaire was translated into Turkish by three researchers and the translation of the items from English to Turkish was compared. The final paper was sent to three experts in the field to get expert opinion. After making the necessary corrections, 30 teacher candidates were interviewed to look at the clarity of the questions on the form. The final form was applied to 314 teacher candidates. Expert opinion supports that the translated items have content validity in terms of measuring eight of the targeted scientific inquiry components in the original scale. Data was analyzed by three researchers independently in order to ensure researcher triangulation. Inter-rater agreement was 95%; however, after raters had the opportunity to “calibrate” their coding scheme with one another, consensus was established virtually assuring nearly full agreement. Results of the investigation showed that preservice teachers generally have transformative views few of them have naive views about scientific inquiry.