The development and validation of an instrument to measure special education teachers' dispositions toward culturally and/or linguistically diverse parents

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an instrument to assess special education teachers' dispositions toward culturally and linguistically diverse parents. The instrument was constructed using recognized scale development techniques. From a thorough search of literature from multiple disciplines, five theories emerged as relevant and were chosen as dimensions for the instrument. Numerous items were generated and finally eight were chosen for each dimension to be evaluated by Subject matter experts. These experts rated each item according to its relevance to the dimension. The highest rated items were chosen for the survey, placed in a survey format, and the instrument was piloted to two focus groups. As a result of the focus groups, minor revisions were made to the instrument. The final 30 item instrument was field tested to a group of 681 special education teachers from a large district in the northeast. Next, exploratory factor analysis was undertaken, and a reliability coefficient was computed.; Some significant conclusions were reached in this study. First, the concept of dispositions that positively impact cross cultural interactions between special education teachers and culturally and linguistically diverse parents could be defined. From the synthesis of extensive literature, appropriate dimensions and items for a scale were developed. The instrument exhibits appropriate content validity, as determined by a search of the literature and a panel of subject matter experts. The instrument exhibits acceptable construct validity as determined by successful exploratory factor analysis and the emergence of a five factor solution with interpretations closely resembling the initially proposed dimensions. Finally, the 22 item scale had a reliability coefficient within the acceptable range.