Validation of an Instrument on Metacognition for Second Cycle General Basic School Pupils

Abstract

This article reports the validation of an Instrument designed for measuring metacognition in terms of knowledge, metacognition experiences and cognitive auto-regulation. The instrument, consisting of 33 Likert Scale type items, is addressed to pupils of 7th and 8th Basic Grades of high-risk Municipalized Schools in the Araucanía Region, Chile. Content validity was evaluated by experts' judgment, construct validity by means of Factorial Analysis and reliability by means of Cronbach's Alpha. Experts' judgment allowed the contrast of every item through metacognition theory, and factorial analysis grouping the items around the factors constituting the construct. The obtained Alfa value (0.860) is very high (Ruiz, 1998) meaning that the instrument can be used as a reliable technique of data collection.