Development and validation of the student attitudes and beliefs about authorship scale: a psychometrically robust measure of authorial identity

One approach to plagiarism prevention focuses on improving students’ authorial identity, but work in this area depends on robust measures. This paper presents the development of a psychometrically robust measure of authorial identity - the Student Attitudes and Beliefs about Authorship Scale. In the item generation phase, a pool of items was developed and assessed for content validity by subject matter experts. In the exploratory phase, data from 439 higher education students were used to identify a latent variable model with three factors: ‘authorial confidence’, ‘valuing writing’ and ‘identification with author’. In the confirmatory phase, data from 306 higher education students were used to test the three-factor model's reliability and validity. The three-factor structure was confirmed, and the results showed the SABAS has a stronger psychometric basis than previously available measures. This measure of authorial identity can be used with confidence in research and pedagogy to help students improve their authorial identity