Development and Validation of a Questionnaire to Assess Situational Interest in a Science Period: a Study in Three Cultural/Linguistic Contexts

This article reports an international initiative to develop and validate a situational interest questionnaire in three cultural/linguistic contexts: Canada (French), USA (English), and Taiwan (Chinese). The 20-item solution (alpha = .90) presented four factors: enjoyment, value, attention/sustained work, and usefulness. These factors and the convergence of the three translations were partially verified through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). A shorter, unidimensional 7-item solution is also presented (alpha = .76) and was confirmed with CFA for two out of the three languages (with all alpha > .75). This questionnaire, named ISiQ, thus presents good or acceptable psychometric properties while securing better coverage of the situational interest construct than most surveys do. Reflections about its possible uses and about the stability/volatility of situational interest items are presented.