The Dimensions and Measurement of Conservation

A large pool of behavior and explanation conservation items was administered to 143 kindergarten, first-, and second-grade children. 2 parallel forms of a conservation scale were constructed from these items. Each form consisted of 6 conservation tasks. An additional scale assessing a slightly different dimension of conservation was constructed from 2 other conservation tasks. The scales were cross-validated on a new sample of 107 children and maintained high levels of internal consistency and homogeneity. Significant correlations with school grades and other nonconservation variables were also found.