Developing a Democratic Participation Scale: Assesing Validity and Reliability

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The aim of this study is to develop a scale to measure undergraduate students’ democratic participation level. The study group comprises of 486 undergraduate students attaining sciences and liberal arts, education, engineering and management and economic sciences faculties in Giresun University. To provide content validity, it was requested from three experts to examine the initial version of the scale, which is formed from two main divisions and 69 items in total. Then, the rearranged version of the scale was conducted and the following analyses were executed. Exploratory factor analysis was used to define the validity of the scale and item analyses were done. After those analyses, the democratic participation scale was found as formed from7 factors, while the social participation scale comprising of 5 factors. Besides, the number of items in political participation scale was reduced to 28 and those in the social participation scale reduced to 22. Cronbach’s Alpha, Spearman-Brown, Guttman Sptlit-Half and Stricht Parallel tests were executed and it was found out that both divisions of the scale are reliable. As a result, it could be concluded that the democratic participation scale is a valid and reliable tool to measure democratic participation level of people from various backgrounds

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Democratic participation , Political participation , Social participation , Democratic Participation Scale , , Scale development , Validity and reliability

Gazi University Journal Of Gazi Educational Faculty

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Gazi University Journal Of Gazi Educational Faculty