Investigating the Psychometric Properties of Implicit Theory of Intelligence Scale (ITIS) in a Student Society

Implicit theory of intelligence is one of the newest socio-cognitive strategies proposed in scholastic motivation. The aim of the present study is to investigate the validity and reliability of the 14-item implicit theory of intelligence scale (IT IS-14) (Abd-El-Fattah & Yates, 2006) in the Iranian student society. This instrument is used to measure the incremental and entity theories. The sample in this study includes 350 B.A. students in Ahvaz Islamic Azad University and Masjed Soleiman Islamic Azad University. The data analysis was carried out through the use of confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach’s alpha and Pearson's correlation coefficients statistic methods. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the subscale of incremental theory and subscale of entity theory were calculated as 0.82 and 0.74 respectively. To estimate the criterion validity, Dupeyrat and Marine’s scale of implicit theories of intelligence were used, and the correlation coefficients for the subscales of incremental theory and entity theory were calculated at two scales which were significant at the level of 0.001. To calculate the construct validity, confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory factor analysis were applied. The results indicated that the structure of implicit theory of intelligence scale was fit with the data and all indexes of fitness confirmed the model’s fitness. In addition, exploratory factor analysis leads to extract two factors of incremental and entity theories of intelligence. Given the calculated psychometric properties, researchers can apply this scale applied to investigate implicit theories of intelligence (beliefs about intelligence) in the student society.