Purpose: A review of texts in Persian language shows that most of the researches in the field of reading are focused
on free or leisure reading and Iranian researchers have not studied academic reading. Perhaps one of the reasons for
not conducting research in this field is the lack of appropriate tools. Therefore, this research was conducted in order
to check the adequacy of the psychometric properties and validate the reading attitude questionnaire of Isakson et
al (2016).
Method: This research is designed with a quantitative approach in order to describe the psychometric characteristics
of the attitude towards academic reading questionnaire. The statistical population of this research included the
students of Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, who were studying in this university in the first half of the
academic year of 1401-1400 SH. Using stratified sampling, 890 students were selected as samples. To validate
this tool, apparent and content validity indices were measured. Confirmatory factor analysis was also utilized to
evaluate the validity of the structure. Multi-value question-answer models were used to analyze the questionnaire
items, and Cronbach’s alpha was used to assess the reliability of this questionnaire.
Findings: In the development of the research tool, a structure with three factors was used, whose factors are:
academic reading behaviors, self-efficacy in academic reading, and evaluation for academic reading. The
appearance validity of the questionnaire items was confirmed, and the content validity test showed a meaningful
relationship between items and factors. The confirmatory factor analysis for these three factors showed that this
model provides an appropriate structure to measure the attitude to academic reading and there exists a good fit
between this proposed model and experimental data. The items of this questionnaire, in addition to having a good
fit with the multi-valued answer question models, have the appropriate clean power at different levels of people’s
attitudes. Examination of the reliability coefficient in this questionnaire showed that both the individual factors and
the questionnaire, in general, are at a desirable level of stability and reliability.
Originality/value: There is no suitable tool in the Persian language that can properly assess the attitude towards
academic reading. Therefore, a lack of appropriate tool in this area can be seen. This tool can be used in educational
research to assess the causes of academic achievement or failure of students, as well as to study their study and
learning styles. The most common use of this tool in tests is to measure reading ability at the beginning of reading
improvement courses in schools and universities or other reading education intervention programs.