Career-oriented performance tasks: Effects on students’ interest in Chemistry

The original version of the Chemistry Attitudes and Experiences Questionnaire was developed by Richard Coll, Jacinta Dalgety and David Salter in 2001. This instrument was part of their research entitled “The Development of the Chemistry Attitudes and Experiences Questionnaire (CAEQ)” which was published in two journals namely, Chemistry Education Research and Practice in Europe in 2002 and Journal of Research in Science Teaching in 2003. The original version of the CAEQ has three (3) parts. The first part is a students’ attitude-toward-chemistry scale (semantic differential) which includes a total of 21 questions across five subscales: attitude toward chemists, skills of chemists, attitude toward chemistry in society, leisure interest in chemistry, and career interest in chemistry. The second part deals with students’ self-efficacy scale (Likert) containing 17 questions consisting of one scale with students not appearing to have different efficacious beliefs for the different tasks in chemistry. The third part deals with students’ learning experiences scale (Likert), consisting of 31 questions which have four subscales: demonstrator learning experiences, laboratory class learning experiences, lecture learning experiences and tutorial learning experiences.The researcher made use of the first part only, the attitude-toward-Chemistry of the CAEQ. The original version and the draft of the shortened version of CAEQ were given to three Chemistry Education experts. The shortened version of the CAEQ was pilot tested to two sections of first year college students in a private tertiary institution during the second semester of School Year 2011-2012. These students were enrolled in a Physical Science course which is a combination of basic concepts in Physics, Chemistry and Geological Sciences. During the pilot testing, the topics being covered by the instructor is Chemistry. A total of seventy five (75) students took part in the pilot testing. Data from the pilot testing were used to determine the reliability of the shortened version of CAEQ. Cronbach Alpha was calculated to be 0.8577.