Ömay Çokluk

Comparison of Students with High Academic Achievement from Different Socio-economic Backgrounds in Turkey

Abstract The research problem is comparative portrayals of qualities of students with high academicachievement levels, at economically disadvantaged and advantaged schools (in views of school administrators inthe TIMMS-2011 data set, Turkey), in relation to socio-economic background and highlight on the potentialrelationship between achievements of disadvantaged students and academic resilience despite their poor conditions.The study group of the research that employs comparative survey methods consists of 520 students. When theresearch findings are holistically considered, it could be suggested that opportunities of economically advantagedand disadvantaged students with high academic achievement vary in terms of almost every indicator. When the factthat being socio-economically disadvantaged increases the risk of academic failure is considered, what is recalledhere, as in this research, is that high academic achievement levels of students in insufficient conditions in manyaspects could relate to academic resilience.

An Investigation of Item Order and Rating Differences in Likert-Type Scales in Terms of Psychometric Properties and Attitudes of Respondents

In social sciences, usability of findings obtained by administration of a scale, accuracy and coherence of decisions made are closely related to psychometric properties of a scale. This study aims to investigate whether psychometric properties and attitudes of respondents differ on the number of response category, verbal or numerical rating and item distribution. To this end, related properties of a scale were changed and different versions of the same scale were used. According to the results of the study, attitudes of respondents did not significantly differ on the original, positive and negative forms of the scale, but significantly differed on the verbal and numerical forms of the scale. Gathering all the items, which are either positive or negative, under the same scale did not cause any response setting. The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients of each version of the same scale were compared and it was found out that the increase in the number of response category caused increase in reliability of the scale. But, this increase was not statistically significant.