Validity and Reliability

Since the focus of the study is to investigate and analyze the attitude and self-concept of students of Arabic, a set of questionnaires were developed. Of 13 items from the language attitude questionnaire, 3 components provided the measure for attitude,

which consisted of 3 items measuring the knowledge toward Arabic, 6 items measuring the emotion towards Arabic, and 4 items measuring action towards Arabic. Meanwhile, of 15 items from the self-concept questionnaire, 6 items measured students’ academic self-concept ofArabic writing and speaking, 2 items measured social self- concept, 5 items measured emotional self-concept, and 6 items measured their physical self-concept. All the items were put into a five-point Likert scale ranging from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree. The positive statements were given scores in a sequence of 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1, and negative statements were given the opposite (Oppenheim 2001).

An instrument is said to be valid if it supposed to measure what is wanted as well as reveal the data from variables that are carefully researched (Tavakoli 2012: 699, Rasinger in Litosseliti 2010: 56). The validity applied in the study is logical validity, which constitutes content validity and construct validity. In terms of the content validity, the statements in the questionnaires were developed based on items for each variable to the entire variables. This aimed to ensure that the tested items were relevant to the ability, knowledge, experience and background of the respondents (Vogt 1999: 301).The construct validity is performed by analyzing all the statements based on the theoretical framework, that is, by looking at the relevance between items with the theories underlying them.

The first questionnaire to collect quantitative data was designed to assess the attitude of students towards Arabic, which consists of three components (domains) of attitudes. Items 1, 2, 13 were intended to measure the cognitive aspect. Items 3 to 8 were to assess the affective aspect. And items 9-12 were developed to capture the conative aspect of learners’ attitudes. The thirteen items of language attitude domain are listed below.

Domain Item #. Total 1 Cognitive 1, 2, 13 3 2 Affective 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 6

3 Conative 9, 10, 11, 12 4 13 Table 10: Language Attitude Items

The statements of language attitude are as follows. 1. Ability to speak Arabic is important

2. Ability to speak Arabic reflects one’s religiousness

3. I feel more educated when speaking about various religious matters in Arabic

4. I prefer to speak about various religious matters in Arabic 5. I am more focused when praying in Arabic

6. I feel more confidence after learning Arabic

7. I feel that having Arabic language skills is prestigious for a student 8. I would like to prioritize studying Arabic more than any other foreign

language

9. I try to pronounce Arabic words like a native speaker

10. I tend to use a bilingual dictionary (ex. Arabic-Indonesian) rather than a monolingual dictionary (Arabic-Arabic)

11. Knowledge of Arabic offers advantages in seeking good jobs

12. Speaking Arabic makes me have more friends than speaking other foreign languages

13. Arabic is Islam, Islam is Arabic

The second questionnaire was designed to measure students’ self-concept. It consisted of 15 items in which items 1 to 7 were designed to measure self-concept of Arabic writing; items 8 to 15 were developed to assess their speaking self-concept. The domain contains four components of self-concept. Items 3, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15 were concerned with the academic aspect. Items 4 to 11 were to assess the social aspect. Items 1, 2, 6, 8, 10 were developed to assess the emotional aspect of learners’ self-concept.

And items 5 and 7 were connected with the physical aspect. These 15 items of self- concept are presented in Table 11 below.

Domain Item #. Total

1 Academic 3, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15 6

2 Social 4, 11 2

3 Emotional 1, 2, 6, 8, 10 5

4 Physical 5, 7 2

15 Table 11: Self-Concept Items

The final statements of self-concept are listed as follows. Writing Self-Concept

1. I like to write in Arabic

2. I am more confident about my Arabic writing ability 3. I always learn how to write well

4. I am happy when my lecturer gives feedback on my writing task

5. When I started to write, often the idea I had in my head just disappears 6. I will not give up practicing even if the result of my writing task is not

satisfactory

7. I am physically fit to complete writing tasks or tests Speaking Self-Concept

8. I like to speak Arabic

9. Speaking in Arabic is easy for me

10. I am more confident to speak Arabic than any other foreign languages 11. I am nervous when speak Arabic

12. I always learn how to pronounce Arabic well 13. I am always happy when assigned a speaking task 14. I lack vocabulary when doing speaking tasks

15. My speaking ability is better than my writing ability

The empirical validity was performed through analyzing statements after the instrument has been tested. The analysis was made by counting the correlation score between item score and the whole score of the questionnaire. This test was administered using Pearson Product Moment. After testing 30 subjects at UIN Surabaya, out of 25 items of language attitudes, 13 items were valid, and out of 33 there were 15 items valid for self-concept. Before creating a final set of questionnaire as an instrument for data collection, the researcher consulted the supervisor in order to attain face validity.

Additionally, an instrument reliability test was performed by using Cronbach’s Alpha (Frankel & Wallen 1990, Rasinger in Litosseliti 2010: 57). If the value of the coefficient of reliability (Alpha) of an instrument ranged from 0.79 to 0.99, it can be classified as high (Guilford & Fruchter 1987).

3.8.1 Reliability Test

The reliability test in this research was done through the measurement of internal consistency reliability by looking at the value of Cronbach’s Alpha, i.e. if the alpha value > 0.60, the variable is reliable and if the alpha value  0.60, the variable is not reliable. The following table shows the result of the reliability test on the language attitude and self-concept variables.

Variable Cronbach

Alpha Language attitudes 0.883

Self-concept 0.872

Based on Table 12 above, the reliability test indicates that language attitudes and self- concept are reliable, which is indicated by Cronbach’s Alpha being higher than 0.79.