Attitude to the Subject of Chemistry in Undergraduate Health Science Students at a Regional University in Victoria

Hi Everyone
On behalf of our project team (myself, Lara Wakeling and Stephen Brown – University of Ballarat) I am posting an update on the status of our project.
The promotion of favourable attitudes towards science, including chemistry, has long been a feature of science education, however, the concept of an attitude towards science is somewhat nebulous. After all, attitude is a multidimensional construct which can be considered as a tendency to respond to a certain stimulus – this response has cognitive, affective, and behavioural elements.
Our undergraduate Health Science students are not required to have chemistry pre-requisites prior to enrolment, yet may be required to study degree level chemistry in semester one of their first year. Our undergraduate first year nursing students are required to study physiology, yet they also do not require chemistry pre-requisites. Understanding the academic content (traditionally assessed by examination) and having a positive attitude toward the content (generally not assessed) are important education outcomes. The Attitudes to the Subject of Chemistry Inventory (ASCI) may be a suitable tool to quantify attitudes to chemistry in undergraduates, although only limited data exist on the use of this questionnaire in health science (i.e. non-chemistry major) students. We aimed to validate an instrument to quantify ‘attitude to the subject of chemistry’ in health science undergraduates.
The questionnaire ‘Attitude toward the Subject of Chemistry Inventory’ was completed by 202 students enrolled in health science programmes at the University of Ballarat in regional Victoria. These were separated into two cohorts: 114 nursing students and 88 health science students.
For each cohort, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to identify items in the questionnaire which aligned to a common underlying factor. Based on our findings, and those of previous researchers, we adopted a two factor solution. Cronbach’s alpha (a) was used to determine the internal consistency of the items in the questionnaire which aligned with each identified factor.
In the nursing students (n=114), the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) was 0.842, indicating a sufficient number of responses for EFA. Two factors were identified with EFA, where Eigen values for factors 1 and 2 were 6.945 and 3.053 respectively – these cumulatively explained 50% of the total variance. In the Health Science students, the KMO was 0.794. Again, two factors were identified with the EFA, where Eigen values for factors 1 and 2 were 6.370 and 3.496 respectively – these accounted for 49.4% of the total variance.
The two factors identified in both the nursing and the health science cohorts were labelled “Cognitive” and “Affect” – these terms can be considered as separate components of attitude. The cognitive factor relates to both intellectual accessibility and anxiety, and the affect factor relates to emotional satisfaction and interest. Our finding suggests that the ASCI may be used to identify these components of attitude in both undergraduate nurse and health science undergraduates.
We have identified that in undergraduate health science students and in nursing students, the ASCI can be used to quantify two components of attitude – these are Cognitive and Affect. There were differences in the responses of our two groups, and further work is planned to identify possible origins of these differences. Further work will attempt to identify any relationships between attitude (and the components of attitude) and achievement in chemistry in health science students.
We have also used the ASCI to assess attitude to chemistry in undergraduate students at both The University of the South Pacific, and The Fiji National University. On-going data collection and analysis of attitudes to chemistry in our undergraduate students will help us develop strategies to improve student engagement with chemistry. Future directions include the development of specific tutorials to highlight the role of chemistry in our health science courses.