The Academic Persistence Scale

Abstract

This research was designed with regard to make a psychological measuring instrument with a variable academic persistence on high school students (SMA) named The Academic Persistence Scale (APS). By knowing the students' academic persistence, the educational institution is able to measure students' opportunities on difficult goals, maintain a sense of comfort towards success, improve students' skills, understanding and confidence. A set of questionnaires was given to 75 participants selected from various schools from schools in Java, Sumatra, Nusa Tenggara and Celebes on May 2018. Participants consisted of 58.3% of students in class X, 29.3% of students in class XI, and 17, 3% of students in class XII. The research method used is a method of construction of psychology (psychometric) measuring instruments. Item scale is constructed by 4 item constructors by making each scale. The initial item is then recapitulated and an internal elimination of the constructor is done with a total of 20 students of UGM's psychology master's program. The results of this study are psychological scales consisting of three dimensions with the distribution of 45 items. These dimensions consist of Long Term Perspective Purposes, Current Purposes Persuing, Recurrent of Unattained Purposes with corrected items of 0.290-0.489, 0.228-0.576, 0.268-0.527 respectively. There are 18 items with low discrimination power ranging from 0.169 to 0.228 and 27 items in the high category ranging from 0.253 to 0.576. The values Aiken's V and Cronbach's Alpha on this scale are 0.462-0.9125 and 0.816 respectively. APS shows the reliability and validity of the content that is good enough to assess students' academic persistence. A short version of the academic persistence scale developed and validated in this study can be used efficiently to evaluate academic persistence in the community and other research areas.