Abstract

Economics affects us no matter what role we play in social life.  Its foundation as a science was laid by the studies of Adam Smith, and since history it has become one of the disciplines accepted in university curriculums. Scarcity, opportunity costs and abandoning something in order to obtain another one are the core concepts of this discipline. These three concepts represent the heart of Economics and generally defined as “distribution of scarce sources”. The purpose of this study is to examine the psychometric features of the discipline; the Economy Attitudes Scale is composed of two dimensions and 28 items measuring the attitudes towards economy subject of the students developed by 1979 United States Economy Education Joint Counsel. Totally, 500 Social Studies teacher candidates from Kilis, Adıyaman, NiÄŸde and Gaziantep University participated in the program. After the translation processes, experts’ opinion was taken for validity of language. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis studies were made for construct validity. The results of exploratory factor analysis revealed that the scale explained 56.936% of the two dimensions. The model adaptation of two-dimensional structure was tested via confirmatory factor analysis and the adaptation index is at good level (RMSEA=.081, GFI=.96, CFI=.98, AGFI=.96, NFI=.95, NNFI= .97, SRMR=.70). These sub-dimensions are the attitude towards economy course and complex economy attitudes.  In conclusion of the reliability analysis of the scale, internal consistency coefficient was found as .87. The findings support that the scale shows a sufficient internal consistency and teacher candidates carry a sufficient validity in measuring the attitudes towards economics course. 

Key words: Economy attitudes scale, economy education, economics education, validity and reliability.