Instruments

In knowledge based economies technological literacy is gaining interest. Technological literacy correlates with attitude towards technology. When measuring technological literacy as an outcome of education, the attitudinal dimension has to be taken into account. This requires a valid, reliable instrument that should be as concise as possible, in order to use it in correlation with other instruments. The PATT instrument as developed in the nineties is an extensive survey that hasn’t been revalidated over the last three decades. The Pupils’ Attitudes Towards Technology (PATT) instrument was reconstructed and revalidated. The validation study was done in two major steps. First a pilot study with 250 students, followed by a main study with 3000 students. Different factors of the instrument were analysed on their internal consistency. Also the goodness of fit indices of the complete model were checked in a confirmatory factor analysis. This resulted in an instrument with six subfactors and 24 items of attitude towards technology. The six factors are Career Aspirations, Interest in Technology, Tediousness of Technology, Positive Perception of Effects of Technology, Perception of Difficulty and Perception of Technology as a Subject for Boys or for Boys and Girls. The instrument is easy to use, reliable and validated. It opens a door to further research and evaluation of technology education.