Construction of a Scale of the Locus of Control in School Situations

Abstract

In many studies it has been shown that the activity of individuals depends on such constructs as self-efficacy, self-esteem, motivation, learned helplessness, or relationships with the environment. These, in turn, are closely related to the placement of a sense of control. Because it is shaped by experience, past events are important in this process, so in the case of a student, special attention should be paid to school situations. As there is a lack of tools that pedagogues could use to study and diagnose the sense of the locus of control of students, an attempt was made to construct one. The research sample consisted of 449 students of the second grade of upper secondary schools in Bydgoszcz. The reliability of the tool was verified by the internal consistency and the split-half coefficient, and accuracy by examining the relationship with the selected variables. The tool can be considered accurate. In terms of the scale of failures, it has achieved satisfactory reliability, while the scale of successes needs to be refined.

Keywords

• pedagogy
• diagnosis
• sense of location of control
• school situation
• pupil