An Exploratory Factor Analysis of Elicited Students’ Salient Beliefs Toward Critical Reading

Abstract

Critical reading was named a key aspiration in the Malaysian Education Blueprint (2015-2025) and is an essential skill students must acquire. However, an increased number of students was reported to demonstrate poor critical reading performance at the workplace. Thus, Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) was utilised to examine students’ beliefs critical reading which encompass behavioural belief (advantages and disadvantages of critical reading), normative belief (identification of people who approve participating in critical reading), and control belief (difficulties in critical reading). A three-stage research design was employed. The first stage, elicitation study, was conducted as this stage has received minimum scholarly attention in the TPB literature and to ensure a more comprehensive analysis. The beliefs were analysed qualitatively, which was proceeded by expert panel review. Subsequently, exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine the validity of the salient beliefs. Findings from the exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis revealed that beliefs that were elicited from students in this first stage are appropriate and possess sufficient reliability and construct validity. Hence, the results of this study not only contributed to the critical reading and Theory of Planned Behaviour’s literature but have also identified more relevant factors that influence students’ perception toward critical reading.

Exploring digital competencies domain and elements for information technology graduates in Malaysia

“…Table 2 shows that the value of the Bartlett test is significant (p-value<0.05). The KMO adequacy measure value is 0.927, which is above the minimum value of 0.6, indicating that Bartlett test is significant [26], [29], [30]. The KMO value shows that the value was greater than 0.6 and close to 1.0 and Bartlett's test significance value close to 0.0 indicates that the data is adequate and appropriate for next reduction procedure [23], [24].…”

“…Table 12 shows that the value of the Bartlett test is significant (p-value<0.05). The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin's (KMO) adequacy measure value is 0.717, which is above the minimum value of 0.6, indicating that Bartlett test is significant [30]- [32] and data is adequate and appropriate for next reduction procedure [28]. .000…”

“…The component has been grouped to certain number of items with their respective factor loading. In this process, only item that exceed factor loading of 0.6 will be retained [9], [30], [31]. According to that, from 49 items, 27 items are dropped as the weighting values factor is below 0.6.…”

“…Next, the same process need have been done to the next construct. There were 40 items represent the construct for functional competencies (FC), and after being analyzed, 24 items did not fulfil the criteria in EFA which represent the value of factor loading were below than 0.6 [30], [32]. Therefore, all these 24 items are dropped from the construct.…”

“…Table 14 shows the distribution of items for the three components in EC constructs. Only 11 items are accepted as the factor loading exceeds the minimum limit of 0.6 [30]. The items are grouped based on the component as shown in Table 14.…”