In the present paper, we deal with results of three attitude scales of prospective elementary school teachers toward arithmetic in Japan. Three attitude scales were administered to 87 prospective elementary school teachers enrolled in the teaching arithmetic oourse at Faculty of Education, Shimane University.
The present study made use of Aiken Attitude Scale (AAS), Dutton Attitude Scale (DAS) and Like-Dislike Attitude Scale (LDS). AAS constructed by Likert Method of summated ratings and DAS constructed by Thurstone Method are the most popular of methods in measuring attitudes toward arithmetic. LDS is Semantic Differential Scale consisted of one bipolar adjectives placed at opposite ends of a 7-point continum.
[1] Result for DAS Combining the number of students who had average scale value scores between 1.0 and 6.0, 52 percent of 87 students had unfavorable attitudes toward arithmetic.
[2] Results for AAS
(1) Combining the number of students who had attitude scores between 1.O and 6.0, 39 percent of 87 students had unfavorable attitudes towaed arithmetic.
(2)The reliability coefflcient for AAS was r = 0.822 by Spearman-Brown formula, and r = 0.948 by Kuder-Richardson formula.
AAS was found to have a high inteinal consistency reliability.
(3) Scale analysis of AAS used Cornell Technique. The coefficient of reproducibility for AAS was 0.865. AAS was found to have a unidimensionality scalability.
[3] Validity among DAS, AAS, and LDS
The correlations among DAS, AAS, and LDS were as follows;
(1) a correlation between DAS and AAS : r = 0.733
(2) a correlation between DAS and LDS : r = 0.630
(3) a correlation between LDS and AAS : r = 0.767
These correlations were siginficant at the 0.01 level by F-testing. The correlation coefficients computed among DAS, AAS, and LDS indicated AAS and DAS were effective measures of attitude toward arithmetic. It was found that both AAS and DAS measured "Like-Dislike" dimension fairly well.