Testing the Research Instruments

Both Schommer’s epistemological beliefs’ questionnaire (1990) and Hofer’s specific-domain epistemological beliefs’ questionnaire (2000) adopted in this study have been widely used and have provided acceptable findings in previous studies (Can and Arabacioĝlu, 2009; Belet and Guven, 2011; Ismail et al., 2012; Tümkaya, 2012); therefore no validity test was carried out in this study since they have already been tested and approved by other scholars (Bendixen et al.,1994; Paulsen and Wells, 1998). However, a reliability test was applied for the purpose of testing the internal consistency of findings across items in both the study instruments. After applying the reliability test, all data for both instruments are considered to be more reliable and consistent thus more accurately reflecting the developed epistemological beliefs of the participants.

A factor analysis test was carried out to examine each subset/dimensions in both instruments to see whether the items were relevant to each other or not. This was interpreted by measuring the factor loading of the item, meaning that the factor analysis undergoes two conditions, that is, if the item with factor loading is less than .6 it will be extracted and if the subset is less than two items of a subset it will be combined into a similar subset. Factor analysis was applied to both instruments and all items are within the accepted range of factor loading except for five items which were only extracted from the general epistemological beliefs questionnaire, as shown in Table 13.

Table 13 Factor Analysis for SEQ – extracted items

Dimensions Subsets Items Factor loading

> .6

Stability of knowledge Knowledge is certain

“Nothing is certain but

death and taxes” .5

tomorrow’s fiction

Source of Knowledge

Don’t criticize authority

Even advice from experts

should be questioned .53

I often wonder how much

my teachers really know .57

Depend on authority

Whenever I encounter a difficult problem in life, I

consult my parents

.07

Based on the nature of the participants who are from the same culture holding the same religious values and are from the same societal conditions, the items that have been excluded from the scale are not relevant to the other items and therefore have no meaning for this study. As clearly shown above, the items excluded from the scale they do not comply with the nature of the participants of this study. Death, respecting scholars and parents are aspects of life that are bound up with religious beliefs, in this case, those of Islam, that everyone must take into account in their thinking and behaviours. Taxes are not applied in Kuwait (no one pays taxes) and so for this reason any response to such a question would be meaningless for this area. The item “Today’s facts may be tomorrow’s fiction” seem ambiguous and unclear to the participants. Extracting these items from the scale is an indication that the participants responded carefully. Furthermore, examination of the items excluded shows that they do not comply with the nature of the participants of this particular study.

The following table (Table 14) shows that two subsets of the general epistemological beliefs have been combined since the factor analysis cannot be run for a subset with less than three items. The two subsets of the general beliefs were loaded under one factor. It is acceptable to have the items of the two subsets combined since they are related and reflect the same concept. It is logical to accept that when a person believes learning happens from the first attempt then there is no need for extra effort to be made.

Table 14 Factor Analysis for SEQ – combined subsets

Dimensions Subsets Combined Subsets Items

Speed of

Learning Learn first time

Learn first time without concentrated effort

Q14. If I get time to reread a textbook chapter, I get a lot more out of it the second time.

Q20.Going over a difficult textbook chapter usually will not help you understand it.

Q51.You will get almost all the information you can learn from a textbook during the first reading.

concentrated effort is waste of time

Q52. Usually you can figure out difficult concepts if you eliminate all outside distractions and really concentrate.

Q50. If a person tries too hard to understand a problem, he or she will most likely just end up being confused.

It should be noted that the combined SEQ (63 items) and DFEBQ (18 items) questionnaires had 81 items in total which was believed to be too long and confusing for the participants to answer. In addition, many items were either repeated or very similar in the context while some items were unclear which confused the participants. There was also a belief that the SEQ questionnaire seems not able precisely to measure the epistemological beliefs of the Kuwait university undergraduates who were studying information literacy in particular, because the SEQ questionnaire was developed in 1990, that is, prior to the revolution of the internet and information technology. For this reason, it is argued here that information literacy should not be included in the questionnaires as a main factor.

4.6 Summary

This chapter was about finding an answer to the research question by analysing the data collected by using Schommer’s (1990) epistemological beliefs questionnaire research instruments to measure the general beliefs and Hofer’s (2000) discipline-focused epistemological beliefs to measure the specific-domain beliefs towards information literacy as a discipline. To have a general overview of the participants’ epistemological beliefs towards general knowledge and information literacy as a discipline, the chapter started by describing the participants’ responses to the questionnaires using the mean values for each subset/dimension for the epistemological beliefs. The overview of the beliefs was found by indicating the mean values and the frequencies’ analysis for the research questions which helped to ensure the distribution of the responses and the existence of epistemological beliefs among the participants at different levels. Following this, the instruments of the research were tested using the factor analysis and reliability test for each subset of the general epistemological beliefs questionnaire and each dimension in the specific-domain epistemological beliefs questionnaire.

The finding has provided an answer to the research question; the findings are that by using SEQ and DFEBQ to measure epistemological beliefs the undergraduates were found to hold a moderate level of epistemological beliefs which were also found to be a little more sophisticated within the specific-domain beliefs than in the general-domain beliefs.