Establishing validity and reliability of the Survey of Attitudes Toward Children

The Survey of Attitudes Toward Children (SATC) was developed to assess a teacher's attitude toward using punitive means of classroom management. The purpose of this study was to determine the reliability and validity of the Survey of Attitudes Toward Children. The survey was completed by education personnel across the United States who attended workshops on alternatives to discipline in the classroom. Internal consistency of the survey was determined by coefficient alpha which was computed to be.866. Test-retest reliability was.757 (p {dollar}<{dollar}.001), using a sample of 19 correctional educators. Students from 62 heterogeneous middle school classes and their teachers (N = 31) from a suburban school district completed the Hyman A-D Scale, a valid and reliable instrument for measuring classroom climate along an authoritarian-democratic continuum. Teachers also completed the SATC. Construct validity, assessed through factor analyses and correlational techniques, suggested a common factor called "Responsibility to Authority." The construct of punitiveness, too, was supported. Criterion-related validity measures yielded statistically insignificant results. Additional analyses showed regional differences, individual differences by job title, and a significant two-way interaction for job title and region. Overall, the construct of punitiveness is validated by the SATC as it relates to obedience to an authority figure. But the SATC also addresses attitudes about the rights and treatment of children that are not necessarily related to the concept of punitiveness. Future studies aimed at validating the SATC need to address teacher characteristics, given the restricted range of responses achieved. Other measures of authoritarianism, too, should be used as criteria against which the SATC can be matched.