Development and Validation of the Public Speaking Attitude Scale: A Theoretical Approach to Assess Student Performance in Public Speaking Courses in Higher Education

Abstract

Although anxiety is an important component of individuals’ relationship with public speaking, it only represents a portion of the story. Specifically, understanding attitudes toward public speaking can help instructors develop improved methods for teaching and assessing student performance in speech classes, and on oral communication-based university-level learning outcomes. This study addresses our lack of understanding of attitudes towards public speaking by collecting and examining data from 1,112 college students to develop a Public Speaking Attitude Scale and examine the scale’s ability to predict students’ intent to leverage skills learned in introductory speech classes in their future endeavors. Initial item development and validation are described, and the scale is compared against existing measures to determine which scale accounts for more variance in students’ intent to leverage public speaking skills. Findings suggest that Public Speaking Attitude accounts for significantly more variance than public speaking anxiety and shyness in a student’s intent to leverage skills learned in the basic speech course. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed.