PREDICTORS OF A GENERAL ATTITUDE TOWARD GIFTED EDUCATION

Among past studies attempting to identify factors which account for th e large individual differences in attitude toward gifted education, no ne has succeeded in doing so with much precision. In their literature review, Begin and Gagne (1994) attributed this lack of significant res ults in large part to various methodological problems. These methodolo gical problems were directly addressed in the present study. A sample of 139 teachers and 138 parents completed an attitude scale and answer ed ten sociodemographic questions. The results of a first regression a nalysis underscored the importance of certain individual variables, su ch as education level and family income, as predictors of the attitude scores. In order to account for the non-independence between the ten variables involved, principal components were extracted and four facto rs identified. Factor scores were then introduced in a new regression analysis. Two of them, Socioeconomic Status and Contact with Giftednes s, were found to explain 12% and 10% respectively of the variance in a ttitude scores, twice as much than in the most successful past study. It is recommended that this methodological approach be used in future studies to search for other significant predictors of people's attitud es toward the education of gifted and talented children.