The Development of an Academic Predictor Scale Based on Students' Attitudes Toward Education.

The article reports on the progress in an attempt to construct an empirically derived non-cognitive scale that is based upon attitudes and values that students seem to hold for education and educational activities. It is hoped that knowledge about factors other than ability in student attainment will evolve from further refinements in studies of this kind, and that the scales will eventually prove of value in selection, student counseling, institutional-type research, or theoretical research. The data reported in this paper represent a second stage in the development of the Academic Attitude Preference Inventory. Initially, a tryout scale of 275 items was developed and administered to a group of 900 new freshmen entering Michigan State University in fall, 1958. These items consisted of activities or situations to be encountered in school to which preferences on a four-point Like-Dislike Scale were to be checked. Extreme responses were "Definitely Like" or "Definitely Dislike" and intervening points on the scale were "Like More Than Dislike" and "Dislike More Than Like." High achievers and low achievers, defined by students having a high or low first quarter grade-point average, were then identified and the response patterns for these high and low achievers compared for each item.