Psychometric Properties and Factor Structure of the Attitudes Toward Research Scale in a Graduate Student Sample

Graduate training in psychology emphasizes a student's ability to understand research design and methodology, as well as to generate research that contributes to the profession. The Attitudes Toward Research (ATR) scale was developed in 2005 to measure attitudes among student populations. Past research suggests the scale contains five factors: usefulness of research, research anxiety, positive feelings about research, relevancy of research to the students' daily lives, and difficulty of research. The current study utilized data collected from first year graduate students ( N = 128) to examine the psychometric properties of the ATR. While the internal consistency and the construct validity of the scale were adequate, the scale did not appear to be a predictor of student grades in this sample. Exploratory factor analyses revealed a three-, four-, and seven-factor solution. Confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the five-factor model was a poor fit for the ATR. While the ATR assesses an important construct, the inferences made from this measure may be less useful when studying graduate students' attitudes and how they may impact learning and training.