Applying beliefs and resources frameworks to the psychometric analyses of an epistemology survey

Abstract

This study explored how researchers’ views about the form of students’ epistemologies influence how the researchers develop and refine surveys and how they interpret survey results. After running standard statistical analyses on 505 physics students’ responses to the Turkish version of the Maryland Physics Expectations-II survey, probing students’ epistemologies and expectations, we interpreted the results through two different theoretical lenses, the beliefs perspective and the resources perspective. We showed that the beliefs and resources frameworks provided different interpretations of the psychometric analyses, leading to different conclusions about how the survey results should be interpreted and how the survey should be improved.