Psychometric Properties of Academic Reading-writing Scale in Postgraduate

ABSTRACTScience generates information that is transformed into innovation, which is reflected in technological development and materializes in economic growth for a country. Every researcher, whether expert or novice, must possess a high level of academic literacy that enables them to consume scientific reports and effectively communicate the results of their research. Therefore, the objective of this work was to construct a scale with psychometric properties to measure scientific reading and writing competence, based on the perception of research professors in research-oriented graduate programs. A mixed sequential (which-which-which) study was conducted. In the qualitative phase, 51 research professors from four higher education institutions in northwestern Mexico participated in a semi-structured interview about the competencies that every researcher should have to adequately practice the profession, regardless of the discipline in which he/she works. Based on the teachers’ responses, items were generated, and a scale to measure academic reading and writing competency was developed. In the quantitative phase, the psychometric properties of the developed scale were analyzed; 323 students from different educational programs participated. The scale consisted of two factors (academic reading-writing and second language proficiency) with 16 items in total. It is concluded that this scale is valid and reliable to measure the construct under study.