Development of an attitude scale for elementary principals about organizational culture and the role of the cultural leader

The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable attitude scale to measure the attitudes of elementary principals toward the concept of organizational culture and their role as cultural leader. The development of this attitude scale is perceived as an initial step in determining the behaviors which principals exhibit as cultural leader.

The scale was developed in three phases. In phase one, a review of the business and educational research yielded a pool of 56 items which was reviewed by a panel of judges, with 38 items selected for field testing. In phase two, the experimental form of the scale narrowed to 3 5 items was distributed to 146 elementary principals in eight school districts within Texas, with 100 principals responding and 66 completing the test/retest versions of the scale. After an analysis of the data, three items were deleted from the scale and three new items written. The revised experimental version of the attitude scale was administered to 80 elementary principals in 19 school districts within Texas. Based on the analysis of data, three items were deleted from the final scale. The analysis of data to determine the reliability of the scale used measures of stability and internal consistency. The Pearson r correlation coefficient was used to calculate the test/retest correlation. A Cronbach alpha and split-half measures (Spearman Brown prophesy formula and Guttman split-half) were used as measures of internal consistency. The experimental test/retest yielded a correlation of .87. The Cronbach alpha was .82 and the Spearman Brown and Guttman split-half formulas were .88. The Cronbach alpha of the revised experimental test was .89 while the Spearman Brown and Guttman split-half formulas were .88.

The attitude scale has demonstrated acceptable levels of reliability over the three test administrations to justify its use with elementary principals in Texas to measure the attitudes of these principals toward school culture and their role as cultural leader. Future research is needed to validate the instrument and broaden its application to other categories of administrators within and outside of Texas.