An attitude scale towards botanic gardens: A study on reliability and validity

The aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable scale determining the prospective teachers’ attitudes towards the botanic gardens. For this aim, literature review was made by the researchers and the 76 item-draft scale was prepared by getting the expert opinion for these initial items. This draft scale, which was a five-point Likert type, was applied to 381 prospective teachers in total, which includes 54 (46 female, 8 male) biology and 327 (276 female, 51 male) science department students at Ataturk University, Education Faculty of Kaz？m Karabekir. The validity and reliability analyses of the scale were made in the light of the data obtained through the study conducted with the participants. In the result of the item analysis and exploratory factor analysis, it was found that the scale had a construct of 3 factors with 49 items and the total variance explained was 50.478%. Cronbach Alpha internal consistency was calculated for the reliability analyses of the scale and it was found as .963 for the whole scale. As a result, these findings showed that the scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool for determining the prospective teachers’ attitudes towards botanic gardens