A Scale of Knowledge and Beliefs about Developmental Dyslexia: Scale Development and Validation

The purpose of this study was to create and validate a scale measuring knowledge and beliefs regarding developmental dyslexia. A four-step procedure was followed to achieve this objective. A literature review generated a preliminary pool of 65 items. A group of 12 university teachers of learning disabilities read the items for content and face validity and offered comments. Based on their comments, some items were combined, and confusing items were changed or eliminated, which left a scale of 50 items, with the response options of true (V), false (F) or dońt know (NS). Later, each participant, using a description of the scales, placed each item into one of the three subscales. An item was considered part of a subscale if at least 80% of the sample was in agreement. The scale was pilot tested with a group of 89 teachers. Participants took the full 50-item scale. Based on the item-total correlations, fourteen items were deleted from the scale, resulting in the final 36-item scale. Finally, the reliability for the total scale was found to be .76 using Cronbach’ alpha. The three subscales within the scale (general information, symptoms/diagnosis, and treatment of dyslexia) all had moderate levels of internal consistency (Cronbach’ alpha ranging .64 to .69). The scale was also practical to use. It allowed a gather a great deal of information about knowledge and beliefs about dyslexia in a brief amount of time.