Background
Boosting students’ disciplinary interest has long been considered an important mechanism to increase student success and retention in STEM education. Yet, interest is a complex construct and can mean different things to different people, and many of the existing interest questionnaires do not identify a specific theoretical framework underlying their items. To demonstrate that curricular interventions targeting students’ interest are effective, educators need a theoretically based instrument to measure interest. The aim of this study was to develop an instrument measuring undergraduate students’ interest in the discipline of biology and collect initial validity evidence supporting the proposed use. The instrument structure is based on Hidi and Renninger’s (Educational Psychologist 41:111–127, 2006) conceptualization of individual interest, and the intended use is to evaluate changes in the biology interests of the US undergraduate students pursuing STEM degrees. To provide evidence of validity, the instrument was completed by 446 biology majors and 489 non-biology majors at two R1 universities. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were applied to evaluate the internal structure of the instrument.

Results
The final three-factor instrument supported by these analyses includes 6 items representing positive feelings towards biology, 5 items representing personal value of biology, and 8 items representing reengagement in biology-related activities. Measurement invariance across biology and non-biology majors was established and subsequent comparisons of these populations demonstrated that biology majors report significantly higher positive feelings, personal value, and reengagement in biology-related activities compared to non-biology majors.

Conclusions
The study findings support the use of the instrument to gain a broad understanding of students’ individual interest in biology. With minor adaptions, the instrument could also be evaluated for use in other STEM disciplines and for use by other populations.



中文翻译：

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衡量大学生对生物学的兴趣：针对希迪和雷宁格个人兴趣的仪器的评估

背景
长期以来，提高学生的学科兴趣一直被认为是提高学生在STEM教育中成功率和保留率的重要机制。然而，兴趣是一个复杂的结构，对不同的人可能意味着不同的意思，许多现有的兴趣调查表并未确定其所依据的特定理论框架。为了证明针对学生兴趣的课程干预是有效的，教育工作者需要一种基于理论的工具来衡量兴趣。这项研究的目的是开发一种测量本科生对生物学学科兴趣的仪器，并收集支持拟议用途的初步有效性证据。该工具的结构基于Hidi和Renninger（2006年教育心理学家41：111–127）对个人兴趣的概念化，预期用途是评估追求STEM学位的美国本科生生物学兴趣的变化。为了提供有效的证据，该仪器由两所R1大学的446个生物学专业和489个非生物学专业完成。探索性和验证性因素分析用于评估仪器的内部结构。

结果
这些分析支持的最终三因素工具包括6个代表对生物学的积极感觉的项目，5个代表生物学的个人价值的项目和8个代表重新参与生物学相关活动的项目。建立了生物学和非生物学专业的测量不变性，随后对这些人群的比较表明，与非生物学专业相比，生物学专业报告的积极感觉，个人价值和参与生物学相关活动的积极性明显更高。

结论
研究结果支持使用仪器对学生对生物学的个人兴趣有广泛的了解。只需稍作改动，即可评估该仪器是否可用于其他STEM学科以及其他人群。