A NEW LOGICAL SCORING KEY FOR THE MINNESOTA TEACHER ATTITUDE INVENTORY¹

Abstract

This study tested three scoring keys for the MTAI—the published empirical key (E); a logical key with three different weights, i.e., + 1, 0, ‐1; and a new logical key with five different scoring weights, one for each of the five responses in MTAI items, i.e., +2, +1, 0, ‐1, ‐2. The latter, termed the pentachotomous‐logical (P‐L), provided scores with slightly higher internal consistency and a frequency distribution which is not so significantly skewed as the others and which provides greater spread among extreme positive and negative scores. Use of the P‐L scoring weights would facilitate the psychological interpretation of the MTAI. However, conclusion that the P‐L scoring key is an improvement must be tempered by the fact that an expected increase in construct validity was not found.

Do cooperating teachers influence the attitudes of student teachers?

“…The MTAI was scored with a new logical. scoring key (Yee & Kriewall, 1969) that was compared to the test authors' (Cook, Leeds, & Callis,, 1951) empirical key and Gage's (1957) trichotomous logical key. In brief, the logical scoring used for this study provides a five-step set of weights per item for the range from most favorable to.…”