The Relationship Between Attitude Toward Science and Academic Achievement in Science: A Three-Level Meta-Analysis

Science education is attracting increasing attention and many researchers focus on the issue about the attitude-achievement relationship in science, but there is still no consistent conclusion. By using a three-level meta-analytic approach, the aim of the current study was to investigate the relationship between attitude toward science and academic achievement in learning science among primary and secondary school students, and to explore if some study characteristics could have contributed to the inconsistent findings with regard to this relationship as observed in the research literature. A total of 37 studies with 132 effect sizes involving a total of 1,042,537 participants were identified. The meta-analytic results revealed that there was an overall positive and moderate relationship between attitude toward science and learning achievement in science (r = 0.248, p < 0.001). The results further found that this association was moderated by the type of attitude and larger effect sizes were shown in self-efficacy than in interest, societal relevance of attitude toward science, and mixed attitude. Moreover, the effect sizes of studies with unstandardized measure to assess science achievement were larger than those with standardized measure. Possible explanations for these findings and its implications for future research directions were also discussed in this review.

Construction and validation of the life roles self-efficacy scale for young adults in school-to-work transition

Self-efficacy is widely regarded as a key factor in shaping one’s own career. To date, self-efficacy has usually been measured on a one-dimensional basis without taking into account the interaction between the various social roles involved in career development. The social roles were described by Donald E. Super in his career development theory. Adopting this framework, we provide a questionnaire to simultaneously measure self-efficacy in Super’s five described social roles. This work presents the development and validation of a new questionnaire entitled the Life Roles Self-Efficacy Scale (LRSES). The questionnaire has been developed based on a series of surveys: the first survey (N = 347) aimed to establish the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and basic psychometric properties of the tool; the second survey (N = 494) aimed to verify the confirmatory factor analysis of the method (CFA) and reliability parameters with regard to a new sample; and the third survey (N = 109) explored the consistency of results over time. Statistical analysis confirmed this tool to be accurate for assessing one’s self-efficacy in school-to-work transitions.