University students' conceptions of first-year mathematics

The 1998 Crawford, Gordon, Nicholas, and Prosser Conceptions of Mathematics scale was administered to 156 first-year university students at a large public university in the midwestern United States. The scale represented fragmented and cohesive conceptions of mathematics. The reliability estimated as internal consistency had a Cronbach alpha of .80 for the fragmented scale and .87 for the cohesive scale. Factor analysis of the intercorrelations indicated the same two factors of fragmented and cohesive as in the original and other replicating studies. Students' conceptions of mathematics in this study were comparable to those reported in the original study.