The Development and Validation of an Inventory Measure of the Schema Notion for Reading Comprehension

The present paper reports on the development and validation of an inventory measure of the schemata notion for reading comprehension. The process of instrument development and validation is described, along with a review of the literature germane to the schema theory. Following Dörnyei and Taguchi’s (2009) recommendations, we performed a thorough browsing of the literature which culminated in 34 initial elicited items; the items were then content-analyzed by the experts in the field of second language reading. The experts deemed some items inappropriate. They approved the remaining 28 items to be field-tested and factor analyzed. The remaining items were then piloted and checked for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and subsequently confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The exploratory factor analysis revealed a robust 2-factor structure: formal schema and culture schema. Next, the confirmatory factor analysis was run which solidified the results gleaned from the EFA. The implications, limitations and further research paths are discussed.