Developing a scale for communication apprehension with lecturers

Problem Statement: Communication apprehension has become a subject of major concern in education. A sizable body of research exists on communication apprehension in the literature. It is observed that students who have CA do not participate in classroom discussions, do not ask for the missing parts of the lecture, do not ask for help when in need and are not willing to learn in class. The Turkish context also needs comprehensive studies on CA in order to conceptualize and solve the problem. Therefore, we primarily need a communication apprehension scale which is valid and reliable for different age groups in the Turkish culture. Purpose of the study: The aim of this study is to develop a scale in order to measure the communication apprehension that the university students are experiencing when interacting with their lecturers. Method: The validity and reliability of the scale was tested with 210 college students for construct validity and item analysis; concurrent validity was tested with 140 students, and the test-retest reliability was tested with 150 students. Findings and Results: At the end of the exploratory factor analysis, it was found that Communication Apprehension with the Lecturers Scale (CALS) consisted of 19 items and three factors. These factors explained 54.2 % of the total variance, Item-total score correlations of the scale were examined and satisfied results were obtained. The construct validity of the scale was tested by using confirmatory factor analysis. The findings indicated that the scale had construct validity. To test concurrent validity, the correlation between students' scores on CALS and Social Anxiety Scale (SAS) were examined and a significant relationship (r=.62) was obtained. The Cronbach-alpha coefficient for the scale was found to be .82 and the test-retest reliability coefficient was found to be. 90. Considering the analysis results, it was decided that CALS had sufficient psychometric properties. Conclusions and Recommendations: Further validity and reliability studies held with larger samples at different universities and different faculties will be beneficial to provide more sufficient psychometric properties.