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. |