Democracy Scale For Teacher Candidates: A Validity And Reliability Study

The aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool in order to determine the democracy levels of teacher candidates. During the scale development process in the research, the validity and reliability studies were conducted through three independent study groups. The first study group consisted of 627 students studying at the Faculty of Education in Inonu University in the 2020-2021 academic year, the second study group consisted of 324 students, and the third study group consisted of 87 students. “The Democracy Scale for Teacher Candidates” was used in the research. In the process of data analysis, SPSS 25 software was used for exploratory factor analysis and AMOS 21 software for confirmatory factor analysis. An item pool consisting of 50 items was created for the scale. The number of items was reduced to 40 by obtaining expert opinion in order to ensure the content validity of the scale. As a result of the factor analysis, it was determined that the total variance ratio explained by the single-factor scale with 17 items was 49.640%, and the internal consistency coefficient was .88. In addition to these, the values obtained as a result of the confirmatory factor analysis conducted to test the construct validity of the scale showed that the scale developed to determine the democracy levels of teacher candidates was valid and reliable.