Developing An Individual Disaster Preparedness Scale For Teachers

Abstract

This study aimed to contribute to disaster research and educational security planning by developing a scale that assesses teachers' individual disaster preparedness. After the 38-item pool formed by the deductive method was subjected to surface and content validity, a draft questionnaire form was created with the remaining 35 items and tested with a pilot study. For the validity and reliability analyses of the scale, a questionnaire was administered to 726 participants, who were determined by convenience sampling method from permanent status teachers working in public schools providing primary and secondary education in two provinces (Bayburt and Gümüşhane) located in the north-east of Turkey, by face-to-face interview method. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis conducted for construct validity, seven factors with eigenvalues above 1, explaining 69.117% of the total variance, were identified. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to verify the structure, and at this stage, nine items were removed from the scale, and analysis was performed again. General goodness of fit values: χ²/sd=3.063, GFI=0.919, AGFI =0.897, CFI=0.950, NFI=0.928 and RMSEA=0.053. Standardized factor loadings ranged between 0.541 and 0.999. The overall Alpha value of the scale is 0.865. As a result of the master validity test, it was determined that the scale met the convergent and divergent validity conditions. The final version of the scale was a psychometrically appropriate measurement tool for the teachers in the sample.