Instruments for Assessing Interest in STEM Content and Careers

Two new instruments created to assess perceptions of science, Technology, engineering, and Math (sTeM) disciplines and careers are analyzed and found to have respectable to excellent internal consistency reliability, as well as good content, construct, and criterion-related validity for the areas assessed. Cronbach’s alpha for the individual scales on the sTeM semantics survey and the sTeM Career interest Questionnaire ranged from .78 to .94 across the eight constructs represented. These scores were judged to be acceptable to assess anticipated changes resulting from Middle schoolers out to save the World (MsosW) iTesT project activities, and are believed to be worthy of use by other iTesT projects.