Attitudes of Secondary School Students to the Basic Sciences in Selected Local Government Areas of Oyo State.
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Date
1985
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Abstract
This study examined the attitudes of Oyo State secondary school students to the basic sciences,
namely, Physics, Chemistry and Biology and also the relationship between their attitudes and
their achievements in these science subjects. Six hypotheses were generated for the study. The
hypotheses were tested at 0.01 level of significance.
Four test instruments, namely, Test of Attitude to Science (T.A.S.), Physics Achievement Test
(P.A.T.), Chemistry Achievement Test (C.A.T.) and Biology Achievement Test (B.A.T.) were
used. All the achievement tests were constructed by the investigator while the attitude scale
was a modified version of the New Hull Attitude Inventory by Ato and Wilkinson (1979). Both
the face and content validities of the research instruments were carried out using forty secondary
school teachers and three experts from the University of If e. The reliabilities of the tests were
found using the Splithalf technique. The Pearson's productmoment correlational analysis
followed by the Spearman-Brown technique yielded reliability coefficients of 0.90, 0.92, 0.94
and-0.96 for the attitude scale, physics achievement test, chemistry achievement test and biology
achievement test respectively.
The sample for the study consists of one thousand six hundred secondary school form four
students selected from forty secondary school spread over twelve out of the twentyfour local
government areas of Oyo State. These students were selected into physics, chemistry and
biology subjectgroups using simple randomisation technique. Each student was exposed to two
tests, namely, the attitude scale and one of the three achievement tests, depending on which
subject group the student belongs to. All tests were administered by the investigator. The data
collected were analysed using inferential statistics. The study showed, among other things, that
the students possess a positive attitude to science and that their attitude scores can be.-used to
predict their achievement into the basic sciences.
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Keywords
Attitude to science, Physics achievement test, Chemistry achievement test, Biology achievement test, Basic sciences