A confirmatory factor analysis of Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inventory (ATMI)

Abstract

Students’ attitudes toward mathematics have been known to influence students’ participation, engagement, and achievement in mathematics. A variety of instruments have been developed to measure students’ attitudes toward mathematics for example Mathematics Attitude Scale (Aiken, 1974), Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Attitudes Scales (Fennema & Sherman, 1976), and Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inventory (ATMI) (Tapia & Marsh, 1996). The purpose of this paper is to report the validation of the ATMI instrument. It was administered to 699 Year 7 and 8 students in 14 schools in South Australia. The students responded on a five-point Likert scale. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported the original four-factor correlated structure based on several fit indices. The validation provided evidence that ATMI can be a viable scale to measure students’ attitudes toward mathematics in a South Australian context