An investigation of knowledge levels of selected junior high school students in regard to the field of energy cognizance

Abstract

The principal objective of this study was to determine the extent to which selected junior high school students in the Amarillo, Texas, public school system possess knowledge in the field of energy. A questionnaire was developed to assess four basic areas of energy knowledge: present energy supplies, future energy sources, energy conservation, and power generation. A sample of 547 students were selected from the total population of 5,978 students. To determine the reliability of the instrument, the Kuder-Richardson 20 reliability coefficient was used. The reliability was found to be 0.62. A three-way analysis of variance was used to test the hypotheses. Because of the unequal number of items in each of the sub-tests, it was necessary to standardize the test scores; thus, the T-Score was used. Evidence gathered in this study indicated that the females obtained significantly higher means scores than males. A significant difference also existed between grade levels. The results also indicate a significant interaction between sex and grade level. They also indicate that when criteria are mean scores obtained on the subtests when criteria are mean scores obtained on the subtests of the instrument, there is no significant difference between males and females, among respective grade levels and no interaction between sex and grade levels. ABSTRACT