Perceived abilities or academic interests? Longitudinal high school science and mathematics effects on postsecondary STEM outcomes by gender and race

International Journal of STEM Education

Table 9 Reliability for math and science interests

Items	Strongly disagree			Strongly Agree
1. You are enjoying this math/science class very much	1	2	3	4
2. You think this math/science class is a waste of your time	1	2	3	4
3. You think this math/science class is boring	1	2	3	4
Reliability	Cronbach’s Alpha (α)
	Math Interests		Science Interests
	0.78		0.81

Items 2 and 3 were negatively worded. All other items were coded as 1 = strongly agree, 4 = strongly disagree. For interpretability, we recoded items 1 and 2 as 1 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree. Due to the missing data, 18,960 and 17,440 observations are tested for math and science interests, respectively
Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS: 09), Base Year, Student Survey, 2009