Revised Women in Science Scale (WISS-R)

Women in Science Scale-Revised (WISS-R) is a revised version of the original tool - Women in Science Scale (WISS), a 27-item Likert type scale created by Erb & Smith in 1984. For reference, please see Erb, T. O., & Smith, W. S. (1984). Validation of the attitude toward women in science scale for early adolescents. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 21, 391-397.

Average Review: (3.3)

Supplemental Information:

WiSS-R_Questionnaire.pdf (22.8 KB) Download

Assessment Type:

6-point Likert scale ranging from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree" with no option of a neutral response.

Scale:

14 items Likert scale

Publication Date:

Jun 08, 2007

Respondent:

1439 middle school students (grades 6th - 9th). 1350 responses were analyzed.

Domain(s) Evaluated:

Attitude / Behavior, Career Knowledge / Acquisition

Sample items:

Women can be as good in science as men can.
A woman's basic responsibility is to raise children.

Reliability:

For "Equality" subscale (8 items) = .78, Spearman-Brown prediction = .72; For "Sexism" subscale (6 items) = .75, Spearman-Brown prediction = .72.

Validity:

Reported and high. Confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory factor analysis (2 factors) were applied for validation of the tool.

Frequency:

Sometimes

Administration time:

15 minutes

Requires a Computer:

Requires Internet Access:

Primary reference:

Owen, S.V., Toepperwein, M.A., Pruski, L.A., Blalock, C.L., Liu, Y., Marshall, C.E., & Lichtenstein, M.J. (2007). Psychometric re-evaluation of the Women in Science Scale (WISS). Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 44, 1461-1478.

Comments:

2 sub-scales (Equality and Sexism) were validated and cross-validated across genders and grades of the respondents.

STEM Criteria

Science

Yes

Technology

Engineering

Math

Contact

MaryAnne Toepperwein toepperwein@uthscsa.edu Phone: (210) 567-4477