THE SCIENTIFIC-ATTITUDE-INVENTORY - A REVISION (SAI-II)

The Scientific Attitude Inventory (SAI) was developed and field tested 25 years ago. It has been used extensively throughout the world, and it continues to be used. Reports of its use and suggestions for revisi on provide impetus for revision. The revision retains the original pos ition statements of attitudes assessed and the original attitude state ments with changes made only to improve readability and to eliminate g ender-biased language. Also, in response to critical analysis, the SAI II uses a five-response Likert Scale. The new version is shorter, 40 items instead of 60 in the original. The SAI II was field tested with 557 students in Grades 6, 9, and 12. The top and bottom 27% of scorers for the total inventory were compared for the subscales. A statistica lly significant difference was obtained for each t-test comparison. Fa ce validity for the SAI II is claimed on the basis of the original jud gments of a panel of judges regarding the attitude position statements which have not been altered. A split-half reliability coefficient of .805 was computed for the entire group of 557 respondents. Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient is .781.