The validation of a scale to measure school principals' attitudes toward the inclusion of students with disabilities in regular schools

This paper describes the validation of a 30-item affective instrument designed initially to measure the attitudes of school principals in government schools in Queensland toward the inclusion of students with disabilities in regular schools. The original response pool consisted of 644 returns. The data validation demonstrated that this was a reliable and valid scale. Subsequent factor analyses yielded a six-factor solution. An examination of the item metrics and an interpretation of the factor items resulted in a decision to delete six items and one factor. The final scale of 24 items and five factors has very acceptable construct validity and psychometric properties and should be valuable in further investigations of attitudes toward inclusive education.