EjSBS - The European Journal of Social & Behavioural Sciences

The European Journal of Social & Behavioural Sciences

Online ISSN: 2301-2218
European Publisher

A Preliminary Report of the Psychometric Properties of the Epistemic Beliefs Inventory

Table 7: Revised EBI Structure

Factor Item
Factor 1
15. How well you do in school depends on how smart you are.
16. If you do not learn something quickly, you will never learn it.
19. If two people are arguing about something, at least one of them must be wrong.
12. People cannot do too much about how smart they are.
5. Some people will never be smart no matter how hard they work.
8. Really smart students do not have to work as hard to do well in school.
3. Students who learn things quickly are the most successful.
Factor 2
25. What is true today will be true tomorrow.
21. If you have not understood a chapter the first time, going over it will not help.
29. Working on a problem with no quick solution is a waste of time.
23. The moral rules I live by apply to everyone.
26. Smart people are born that way.
28. People who question authority are troublemakers.
22. Science is easy to understand because it contains so many facts.
Factor 3
32. Some people are born with special gifts and talents.
20. You can study something for years and still not understand it.
27. When someone in authority tells me what to do, I usually do it.
24. The more you know about a topic, the more there is to know.
31. Sometimes there are no right answers to life’s big problems.
Factor 4
4. People should always obey the law.
6. Absolute moral truth does not exist.
20. Children should be allowed to question their parents’ authority.
2. Truth means different things to different people.
Factor 5
10. Too many theories just complicate things.
11. The best ideas are often the most simple.
9. If a person tries too hard to understand a problem, he or she will most likely end up being confused.
13. Instructors should focus on facts instead of theories.
18. Things are simpler than most professors would have you believe.
17. Some people just have a knack for learning, and others do not.
Excluded Items
14. I like teachers who present several competing theories and let their students decide which is best.
7. Parents should teach their children all there is to know about life.
1. It bothers me when instructors do not tell students the answers to complicated problems.
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