Validación de la Escala de Actitud hacia la Investigación en Estudiantes Mexicanos de Psicología

Abstract

The aim of this research was to validate the Scale of Attitude towards Research (SAR). A snowball sampling was used. A sample of 392 psychology students, 74.2% women and 25.8% men, from a public university in north-eastern Mexico was collected. The exploratory factor anal-ysis yielded a structure of three factors: affective-behavior-al factor of positively codified items, phrased in the sense of acceptance (ordinal α = .90), cognitive factor (ordinal α = .89), and behavioral-affective factor of negatively codified items, phrased in the sense of rejection (ordinal α = .87). The model had a good fit (NFI = .95, RFI = .95, RMSEA = .02, and SRMR = .07) and the three factors showed con-vergent validity (AVE > .50 and ω > .80) and discriminant validity (r2F1,F2 < AVEF1 y AVEF2). The average attitude was favorable towards research, with no difference between women and men, except for a greater average in the af-fective-behavioral factor of positive-codified items among men. The highest average on the scale among students who plan to pursue the research area and the positive correlation between the scale and the marks in a research related sub-ject provided evidence of construct validity. We concluded that the scale shows internal consistency and construct va-lidity.