Design and validation of a scale to evaluate the impact of implementing a quality management system in schools

Abstract

Implementation of quality management systems in educational organisations is a fact in many countries. Schools adopt systems to establish an improvement plan, based on evaluating everything they do. Evidence of the improvement and changes must be gathered and tools and techniques are thus required to evaluate these changes. This paper presents a questionnaire with a design and an analysis of its technical characteristics. Results show that the overall reliability of the questionnaire is very good, with a Cronbach’s α of .988 and values higher than .92 in each of the six dimensions. The item analysis shows the level of homogeneity, with values over .25. The validity of the questionnaire is also good since the dimensions and subdimensions used are consistent, and the empirical data and the unidimensionality of the construct is proven.