Development and Psychometric Validation of Geography Interest Inventory for Secondary School Students

In recent time, the number of students' academic performance in geography in secondary schools in Delta State, Nigeria has been on the declined. Therefore, it becomes imperative to know the students interest level in the subject. The study is on development and psychometrics validation of geography interest inventory. The instrument has 27 items. The instrument was administered to a sample of 494 secondary students in Delta State, Nigeria. The sample was randomly split in two halves. The first sample 247 was used for Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). The results of the Exploratory Factor Analysis resulted in Four Factor Solution that is emotion, value, Knowledge and engagement. To validate the structure or factors obtained from the EFA, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using second sample of 247. The result of model fit in term of TLI (0.904), CFI (0.917), RMSEA (0.066) and SRMR (0.63) were above the recommended cut of o.90 for CFI, TLI and less than 0.08 for RMSEA and SRMR respectively. Furthermore, the study also indicates that items loading in the respective dimension were significant. Therefore, the geography interest inventory is valid and reliable.