Development of Civil Literacy Scale: A Study of Validity and Reliability

Abstract

Civil literacy is a concept that enables individuals to act with an awareness about their own rights and responsibilities;
to become active in civil life; and to express individual knowledge about the state's management process. Civil literacy
is one of the skills that individuals should acquire in learning about the development and change of society because it
demonstrates the effectiveness of individuals who have a voice and who can influence the functioning and development
of the state especially in democratic societies. The purpose of this research is to develop a valid and reliable Civil Litera cy
Scale to measure levels of civil literacy demonstrated by pre ser vice teachers. The participant sample for the research
was determined by a convenience sampling method from prospective teachers studying in the Faculty of Education at a
university in Turkey. Exploratory factor analysis occurred on 242 pre service teacher s while a test retest operation was
conducted on 50 pre service teachers and confirmatory factor analysis was performed on 231 pre service teachers. As
a result of the exploratory factor analysis, a 25 item Civil Literacy Scale emerged with a total varianc e value of 57.23%.
The four factor structure revealed by this analysis was confirmed by a confirmatory factor analysis process. In the test
re test operation, the internal consistency co efficient was determined as .81 which is in accordance with the
consistency of the scale between the first test and the re test. According to Cronbach's Alpha reliability test (one of the
reliability tests carried out for the overall and sub dimensions of the scale) the overall scale of 25 items received a value
of 0.92, wh ich proved that the scale was highly reliable. In this context, it can be stated that a reliable and valid Civil
Literacy Scale was obtained.