The Development of Paranormal Belief Scale (PBS) for Science Education in the Context of Turkey

Present study aims to translate and develop Paranormal Belief Questions (Rice, 2003) measuring students’ nonscientific
beliefs which threat science education. Original version of these questions was asked in Southern
Focus Poll (1998). 17 questions about paranormal beliefs were administered to 114 university students from
different departments. After translating and developing Paranormal Belief Questions into Turkish, factor
analysis was conducted and paranormal beliefs were limited in two dimensions as classical paranormal beliefs
and religious paranormal beliefs as parallel with original form. Déjà vu item that is not consistent with other
paranormal beliefs was removed depending on the factor analysis. The results of the current study enable to
differentiate scientific beliefs from non-scientific beliefs of students. By this way, science educators can benefit
from this scale.