A Study on Development of an Instrument to Determine Turkish
Kindergarten Students' Understandings of Scientific Concepts and
Scientific Inquiry Processes
The aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable instrument to
measure Turkish kindergarten students' understandings of some science
concepts and scientific inquiry processes which are grounded in the
Turkish Preschool Curriculum. The sample of the study was 371
kindergarten students, 12 Subject Area Experts (SAE), and 7 Turkish
Language Experts (TLE). Six stages were followed in the development
process of the instrument: (i) item formulation, (ii) content validity,
(iii) language validity, (iv) item difficulty and discrimination index,
(v) factor analysis, and (vi) reliability. First, an item pool was
constituted with 42 items. Second, SAEs and TLEs rated these items in
respect to the degree to which they reflected the content and their
understandability and grammar accuracy in Turkish. Third, all items were
implemented kindergarten students, and 26 items were eliminated
according to their item difficulty and discrimination index values.
Last, factor analysis and reliability were studied by means of the data
belonging to the rest of items. Results revealed that the instrument
with 16 items had two factor structure and acceptable reliability
