Artistic Thinking Disposition Scale for Middle School Students: A Validity and Reliability Study

This study developed and validated a 19-item multidimensional scale to assess middle school students’ (Grades 5–8) disposition towards artistic thinking in visual arts education within a developmentally appropriate and domain-specific framework. Addressing the limited availability of such instruments, the study aimed to provide a theoretically grounded and practically useful tool for research and instructional evaluation purposes. Nine experts reviewed the initial pool of 28 items, yielding strong content-related evidence (CVR = .667–1.000; CVI = .988). Evidence pertaining to the response processes of 50 students indicated that the items were generally comprehensible (item-level indices = .85–1.00; overall index = .92). To examine the internal structure, exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring with Promax rotation was conducted on data from 499 students. The findings supported a three-factor structure explaining 38.232% of the extracted variance, with factor loadings ranging from .35 to .87. Confirmatory factor analysis on an independent sample of 389 students yielded acceptable model fit (χ²/df = 1.93; CFI = .914; TLI = .902; RMSEA = .049; SRMR = .051). Reliability and model-based validity findings generally supported the psychometric adequacy of the scale, and multi-group CFA indicated acceptable scalar invariance across genders. Overall, the artistic thinking disposition scale offers a valid, reliable, and developmentally sensitive measure of artistic thinking disposition.