Development of an Assessment for Measuring Middle School Student Attitudes towards Robotics Activities

The next generation of world citizens must be technologically fluent members of society. By technological fluency we mean the ability to manipulate technology creatively and for one's own use. This fluency is composed of knowledge and skills utilizing materials and tools, as well as attitudes, (e.g. confidence), with respect to technology. Numerous interventions exist to support middle school students' technological fluency, and robotics activities are popular. It is critical that instruments assessing student attitudes towards robotics are available for the development and evaluation of these interventions. We present an instrument for assessing middle school students' technological fluency attitudes specifically tailored for robotics activities. Survey subscales were developed from existing science motivation research, and individual measurement items were generated and adapted within those subscales. The robotics activity attitudes scale (RAAS) was revised through three rounds of pilot testing in 2010, 2012 and 2015. The final RAAS in 2015 consisted of 50 items with an overall Cronbach's alpha of .972 (N=236) organized in four dimensions of Curiosity, Interest, Expectancy Value, and Confidence and Identity.