Beyond acceptance: A scale development study on students' attitudes toward inclusive education (SASIE).

Abstract

This study aimed to develop a valid and reliable scale for measuring primary school students' attitudes toward inclusive education. A total of 500 primary school students from Ankara, Türkiye, participated in the study, including 250 students in Subsample 1 for the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and 250 students in Subsample 2 for the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The findings indicated that the final version of the SASIE consists of 16 items loading on a single factor, labeled Attitude. The scale demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties, with a Composite Reliability (CR) of 0.94 and an Average Variance Extracted (AVE) of 0.50, indicating adequate internal consistency and convergent validity. Because the scale relies on self-report data and several items assess socially desirable characteristics such as empathy, cooperation, and fairness, participants' responses may have been influenced by social desirability bias. Therefore, the findings should be interpreted with this limitation in mind. Future research is encouraged to adopt multi-informant approaches by incorporating the perspectives of teachers, parents, and other educational stakeholders and to examine the relationships between these measures and SASIE scores. Such studies would provide additional evidence on the scale's external validity and practical applicability in inclusive educational settings.