The Scale of Attitudes toward the Information Technologies and Software Course: A Scale Development Study^†

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I would like to thank the authors for their hard work. Moreover, I would suggest some amendments to improve their work; 

 

1- the title is good. 

2- abstract\ The abstract needs further information and elaboration, for example, methodology, future studies, and implication of the (instrument).  

 

3- The introduction section needs a lot of improvements; you need to follow a strategy to address all variables of the study in the introduction; I always advise researchers to follow the "reverse triangle approach", where you can start with the general idea and go deeper till you address the fundamental gap of the research. 

 

4- in the introduction, you merged the “introduction” section and background and literature review which is very broad. Please make sure to divide the introduction to avoid any confusion among readers of your work. 

 

5- show the problem gap! Or a problem that is the motive for this study ( instrument development).

 

6- methodology is very clear and comprehensive, however, please elaborate on the ethics part.

 

7- results presentation is very clear and comprehensive. 

 

8- The Discussion must be integrated with the literature ( you don’t have a literature section in your study!! and the findings. It’s too broad and confusing. You must align it with the literature review. Please argue and support your argument with past research or else this is not a discussion anymore this is an explanation of your results again! Support any strong claim or conclusion with past research. 

 

9- In conclusion, ( I would advise you to separate the conclusion into a different section) you must summarise the main objective of the research about the current research contributing to the body of knowledge. 

 

10- the article needs English proofreading! 

Author Response

First of all, thank you very much for your detailed review and guiding comments. 

Response 1: Small details have been added in line with your suggestion. Abstract section has been shortened due to word count limitation. Desired details are included in the study.

Response 2: The very broad introduction has been rearranged to avoid confusion by dividing it into the headings of “Review of the Literature” and “Purpose of the Study”.

Response 3: With the title of "Purpose of the Study" added to the introduction, this problem has been tried to be eliminated.

Response 4: Detailed information on ethics is detailed under the title of Conducting the Pilot Study.

Response 5: The Discussion section was organized and divided into two sub-headings as “Discussion” and “Conclusions”. One paragraph is under the heading “Delimitations”. References [47], [48], [51] and [52] were used to support these sections.

Response 6: The article was sent to the relevant unit within the English editing MDPI and edited.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This study was well thought out and the use of factor analysis is always commendable, and interesting.  The diagrams and tables used throughout, to demonstrate the statistical analysis completed on the data set, were well used.

I would like further and more in depth review of the psychological literature about Attitudes and computer attitude scales of note, before this paper can be accepted fully.  For example, near the end TAM (Davis) is mentioned - there are a plethora of 'computer attitude' measurement scales available, and where this study sits in relation to those other instruments is not clear.  Does this new instrument add to the CA scale literature or confirm relevant/recent CA scales?  There is no mention of TPACK for example, or UTAUT scale? A wider review of the CA scale literature would ensure someone reading this, with experience in the field, does not question the relevance of the scale, as devised.

In the introduction section (page 2) ICT in the US and England curriculum since the 1990s....I was studying ICT in the late 1970s/early 1980s, and it struck me that a further and wider review of the literature is needed.  What about Papert, for example, in the 80s?

It strikes me that Google was used to conduct the review of literature - and when I checked, similar results were found.  Peer reviewed literature of note was not referred to - and a full analysis of Computer Attitude scales and their psychological counterparts is needed.

Methods - how were the participants recruited to participate in the study?  Could they not participate or opt out?  What were the ethical procedures followed by the researchers?

Can you also mention or show some of the scale items created in the Methods section please.  I found the items later on in the Results section, but a sample of a statement from each of the 4 main factors would aid the readability of this Methods section.

Results - well done and very interesting and well displayed.

Discussion - this needs to be redone - where does this study sit in relation to decades of similar work (not just TAM) by many US and other European authors?  Similarly, look at all Timothy Teo's work in Singapore on this (and other) topics? This section is not persuasive enough in its current form.

Author Response

First of all, thank you very much for your detailed review and guiding comments. 

The article was sent to the relevant unit within the English editing MDPI and edited.

Response 1: In line with your suggestions, necessary research was carried out and information about the place of the scale developed with the TPACK and UTAUT scales in the literature was added using the sources [47], [48], [51] and [52].

Response 2: The years when information technologies were widely integrated into education were taken into account. In line with your suggestion, the source numbered [9] has been added.

Response 3: Based on the statement that the authors can use Web of Science, PubMed/MEDLINE or Google Scholar in the MDPI reference system, many resources related to the study were searched.

Response 4: The ethical procedures followed are included under the heading Conducting the Pilot Study.

Response 5: A scale expression for each of the 4 main factors has been added.

Response 6: The Discussion section was organized and divided into two sub-headings as “Discussion” and “Conclusions”. One paragraph is under the heading “Delimitations”. References [47], [48], [51] and [52] were used to support these sections.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The Scale of Attitudes towards the Information Technologies and Software Course: A Scale Development Study

 

This paper presents a scale development study and the psychometric properties a scale of attitudes towards the information technologies and software course. The result of exploratory factor and confirmatory factor analysis is presented in a clear way. In general the whole paper is well written and in my opinion it is worth publishing.

 

A few points need to be considered.

 

-The abstract should be revised and include information about the results of the analyses

and the main conclusion of this work.

 

 

-In CFA, it is recommend to add a Table which depicts the factors, estimates of factor loadings, standards errors, and statistical significance

 

-A short paragraph discussion the limitation of the study is recommended.

 

 

-Since from the scree plot the dimensionality is not cleat, parallel analysis is recommended to carry out to support it.

Author Response

First of all, thank you very much for your detailed review and guiding comments. 

The article was sent to the relevant unit within the English editing MDPI and edited.

Response 1: Small details have been added in line with your suggestion. Abstract section has been shortened due to word count limitation. Desired details are included in the study.

Response 2: In CFA, two separate tables were added showing factors, estimates of factor loadings, standard errors and fit indices.

Response 3: The Discussion section was organized and divided into two sub-headings as “Discussion” and “Conclusions”. One paragraph is under the heading “Delimitations”. References [47], [48], [51] and [52] were used to support these sections.

Response 4: While performing the Exploratory Factor Analysis, factorization techniques were tried separately. The number of factors was determined by looking at the factor loads that emerged as a result of the analysis. The structure was also confirmed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf