Psychometric Properties of the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS) in a Junior High-school Sample

Reading is an important skill for language acquisition. Considering the great importance of reading comprehension across students’ life span, educational researchers have paid their attention to this area. The present study was aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of the elementary reading attitude survey (ERAS) which was designed by McKenna & Kear. Participants were 387 junior high-school students in Shiraz. They were selected based on purposive sampling. Two-hundred and one students studying in a gifted school & one-hundred and eighty six students studying in a public school filled the ERAS. To investigate the construct validity of the questionnaire exploratory factor analysis with Varimax rotation was performed using SPSS (V. 16). Measures of sampling adequacy were satisfying. EFA revealed two factors, academic reading attitude & recreational reading attitude which explain 47.42 percent of variance. In addition, the obtained Chronbach’s alpha was 0.77 and it was revealed that ERAS reliable to be used in Iran. In general, the results revealed that elementary reading attitude survey is a reliable and valid measure to be used for Iranian junior high-school students and it can be use for educational and research purposes.