Cross-cultural Adaptation of SATS-36 for Students in the 3rd Cycle of Portuguese Elementary Education

Attitudes towards Statistics is a topic widely investigated for students at university level, but scarce among students in the 3rd cycle of elementary education (expected age: 12-15 years). In this work, we performed a cross-cultural adaptation of the scale of attitudes towards Statistics SATS-36© (Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics, version Post) to Portuguese (European) language and for students of that school cycle. Based on a sample of 215 students from schools in the central region of Portugal, we demonstrate psychometric properties and internal consistency of the adapted scale. However, applying confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the structure of six factors suggested for SATS-36© was not adjusted to the data collected. Conducting an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), a model with four factors is proposed and validated: Affect, Interest, Value, and Effort. The proposed model can be compared in number of factors (four) with the model published for students of the same level of education in Estonia. However, the proposed model presents better results in the CFA indexes considered. The SATS-36© items not included in both models are due to their unsuitability for pre-university students. The adaptation and validation of this instrument will be fruitful in the management of action strategies in the teaching of Statistics. It is expected that the monitoring of students’ attitudes by the teacher will allow an improvement in their Statistics learning.

Attitude; SATS-36©; 3rd Cycle of Elementary Education; Exploratory Factorial Analysis; Confirmatory Factorial Analysis