Development of Standardized Scientific Temper Tool

Abstract

The prime aim of the present paper was to develop a standardized tool to measure scientific temper. For this purpose, the investigators organized three workshops with experts in the field of science and social sciences and the tool is developed in three phases. In the first phase, the term scientific temper had been operationally defined and four dimensions, i.e. spirit of enquiry, rational thinking, cause and effect relationship and scientific information were finalized to measure the scientific temper among people. This scientific temper tool was developed in the form of a questionnaire. The items related to above four dimensions were collected and shuffled well to prepare initial draft of the schedule. Thus the initial draft contained 70 items in it. The questionnaire was prepared in three parts, designated as FORM A, FORM B and FORM C. In the FORM A responses were recorded on Likert-scale while in FORM B questions were kept open-ended and the responses in FORM C, which constituted the core of Scientific Temper Questionnaire (STQ), were categorized into three options, from scientific to superstitious. It should be noted that all the three parts contianed identical indicators.

In the second phase, the initial draft of STQ was administered on a sample of 120 students in order to determine the discriminative value and popularity value of each item for the purpose of item analysis. The reliability was established through Kuder Richardson formula and content and concurrent validity were also established. In order to develop