Psychometric reevaluation of the scientific attitude inventory‐revised (SAI‐II)

The central purposes of this study were to review the development and evolution of the Scientific Attitude Inventory (SAI) and then reevaluate the psychometric properties of the revised form of the SAI, the Scientific Attitude Inventory II (SAI‐II). The SAI‐II was administered to a convenience sample of 543 middle and high school students from five teachers in four schools in four school districts in San Antonio, Texas, at the beginning of the 2004–2005 school year. Confirmatory factor analysis on the full data set failed to support the existence of a 12‐factor structure (as proposed by the scale developers) or a one‐factor structure. The data were then randomly divided into exploratory [exploratory factor analysis (EFA)] validation and confirmatory [confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)] cross‐validation sets. Exploratory and confirmatory models yielded a three‐factor solution that did not fit the data well [χ² (321) = 646, p < .001; RMSEA = .061 (.90 CI = .054–.068); and CFI = .81]. The three factors were labeled “Science is About Understanding and Explaining” (13 items), “Science is Rigid” (6 items), and “I Want to Be a Scientist” (8 items). The α‐coefficients for these three factors ranged from 0.59 to 0.85. Whether these identified subscales are valid will require independent investigation. In this sample, and consistent with prior publications, the SAI‐II in its current form did not have satisfactory psychometric properties and cannot be recommended for further use. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 600–616, 2008     

Compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction among Colorado child protection workers

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to understand better the risk of compassion fatigue (the trauma suffered by the helping professional) and burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced sense of personal accomplishment), and the potential for compassion satisfaction (the fulfillment from helping others and positive collegial relationships) among Colorado county child protection staff using the Compassion Satisfaction/Fatigue Self-Test [Figley, C. R., & Stamm, B. H. (1996). Psychometric review of Compassion Fatigue Self-Test. In B. H. Stamm (Ed.), Measurement of stress, trauma, and adaptation (pp. 127-130). Lutherville, MD: Sidran Press]. An additional goal was to test the relationship of these three constructs to each other. METHOD: A self-report instrument developed by Stamm and Figley was used to measure the risk of compassion fatigue and burnout and the potential for compassion satisfaction among 363 child protection staff participating in a secondary trauma training seminar. RESULTS: Participants were significantly more likely to have high risk of compassion fatigue, extremely low risk of burnout, and good potential for compassion satisfaction. Participants with high compassion satisfaction had lower levels of compassion fatigue (p=.000; mean=35.73 high compassion satisfaction group, mean=43.56 low group) and lower levels of burnout (p=.000; mean=32.99 high compassion satisfaction group, mean=41.69 low group). CONCLUSION: Approximately 50% of Colorado county child protection staff suffered from "high" or "very high" levels of compassion fatigue. The risk of burnout was considerably lower. More than 70% of staff expressed a "high" or "good" potential for compassion satisfaction. We believe compassion satisfaction may help mitigate the effects of burnout.