The evaluation of primary students' school fears: The study of measure development

In this study, a scale was developed to determine the fears of 3rd and 4th class students in school life and then validity and credibitily of this scalewas searced. At the stage of developing scale, children were written stories about fear in the school life. By looking at the stories of 80 students, open- ended guestions were prepared. Item pool was made with answers to guestions, fear situation determined by drama and searching literature.. by direction of these guestions, a scale form with 73 items was prepared and ıt was applied to 147 students. During application the guestions children couldn't understand were noted and guestions were taken off because of the fact that it isn't clear. The scale form reduced to 71 guestions was reduced to 44 items I the view of 12 expert academians. The data was obtained by 619 students with the scale form containing 44 items. 558 of them were accepted as valid. After exploratory factor analysis a structure with 3 factors containing 22 items was obtained. These factors are called authority fear, peer fear and failure fear. Total variance explanation percent of the scale is 49.705. Internal consistency coefficient in outhority fear is 87, in peer fera is 85, in failure fear is 87. Total internal onsistency coefficient of the scale is 91. In EFA result, the scale was shaped. In the last status 449 of the scale applied to 460 were valid and the relevance to CFA was searcied. At the result of CFA, structure with 3 factors was verified. Coherence index points to a good harmony. As a result ıt's thought that fear scale in primary schoolis a valid and reliable vehicle to measure the fears of children in school life. Key Words: fear, fear in primary, fear scale in primary, scale development