Scale Development Process Research Articles

The communicative power of nonprofit actions and values: A pilot study of dialogic stewardship

The following study seeks to expand and advance stewardship theory in public relations by incorporating tenets of dialogic and contingency theories to propose dialogic stewardship. Given fundraising trends and a theoretical shift in public relations to reconsider relational outcomes beyond organizational performance, the study re-centers stewardship on donor preferences and highlights the need to co-create stewardship strategies with donors to nonprofit organizations. After defining dialogic stewardship and how it helps to address “negative spaces” in donor-nonprofit relationships, the study puts forth a measurement model incorporating donor perspectives by using quantitative scale development processes. Analysis suggests dialogic stewardship consists of five dimensions: Reporting on Responsibility, Strategic Recognition, Organizational Values, Financial Management, and Engagement. The conclusion explains how these dimensions build public relations theory by deliberately bringing stewardship and dialogue together.

A co-created value scale for the hospitality service: applying a text mining approach

PurposeAlthough co-creation draws attention from researchers and practitioners, the concept is theoretically discussed, and it is not known enough how to measure co-created value (CCV) substantially at service encounters. This study aims to conceptualize CCV from the service-dominant (S-D) logic perspective and develop a CCV scale for hospitality services.Design/methodology/approachIn addition to the conventional psychometric procedure for scale development, this study combined text-mining techniques and interviews to generate items to capture the concept of CCV comprehensively. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted using two different surveys. Moreover, structural equation modeling was performed to test concurrent validity.FindingsThe study developed a CCV scale, including four sub-dimensions: CCV-in-use, CCV-in-interaction, CCV-in-involvement and CCV-in-experience. The validity test results demonstrated that the new scale effectively measured CCV in a hospitality setting.Research limitations/implicationsThe multidimensional constructs and the scale that this study developed will contribute to empirical research and improve understanding of CCV at the service encounter. Moreover, managers can enhance their competitive advantages by identifying and evaluating factors to facilitate CCV.Originality/valueThe study reconceptualized CCV, drawing on a resource-based view from S-D logic, and developed a scale to measure the degree to which customers perceive CCV. Furthermore, it achieved methodological advancement in adopting text mining of online reviews for the scale development process.

An Analysis of the Dimensional Constructs of Green Innovation in Manufacturing Enterprises: Scale Development and Empirical Testing

Green innovation has become an important way for manufacturing enterprises to achieve sustainable development. Existing research on green innovation mostly focuses on conceptual content, and relevant empirical studies only involve individual indicators. Systematic measurement tools are still lacking. Therefore, drawing on the theoretical framework provided by the social-ecological system, a clear definition of the connotations of green innovation and an exploration of the dimensional structure and scale development of green innovation in enterprises are the core objectives of this study. Strictly adhering to the process of scale development, four core dimensions of green innovation in enterprises are identified, and a scale with 18 items was established. The results show the following: (1) The connotations of corporate green innovation should be expanded to include not only technology and product innovation but also internal institutional innovation and external environmental innovation. (2) Green innovation in enterprises should be measured in a rigorous manner, and such measurements should follow the logic from goals to behavior. (3) The scale of green innovation should be refined, and questions should be designed to characterize specific green innovation behavior indicators. In summary, this study lays a foundation for quantitative research on green innovation in enterprises and provides a useful reference for manufacturing enterprises to improve their level of green innovation.

The Environmental Awareness in the Context of Sustainable Development: A Scale Development and Reliability Study

Sustainable development, with its roots dating back 35 years, is gaining more and more importance, and it states that meeting the needs of the present must also take into account the ability of future generations to meet their needs. To realize sustainable development, that has environmental, economic, and social dimensions; there are activities of various institutions and organizations as well as the work of governments. It is known that environmental education will contribute to individuals in terms of taking important responsibilities in the construction of our future and creating awareness, knowledge, and awareness of ecology and the environment. In this study, a scale for environmental awareness in the context of sustainable development was developed. The sample of the study consists of 492 secondary school students. The scale development process, which started with the preparation of the item pool, continued with the necessary analyzes and eventually resulted in the acquisition of a valid and reliable measurement tool consisting of 2 factors and 15 items. It is expected that the developed scale will contribute to the literature for evaluating environmental activities, projects, or instructional designs in the context of sustainable development.

Preliminary psychometric scale development using the mixed methods Delphi technique

This study implemented a Delphi Method; a systematic technique which relies on a panel of experts to achieve consensus, to evaluate which questionnaire items would be the most relevant for developing a new Propensity to Trust scale. Following an initial research team moderation phase, two surveys were administered to academic lecturers, professors and Ph.D. candidates specialising in the fields of either individual differences, human-robot interaction, or occupational psychology. Results from 28 experts produced 33 final questionnaire items that were deemed relevant for evaluating trust. We discuss the importance of content validity when implementing scales, while emphasising the need for more documented scale development processes in psychology. Furthermore, we propose that the Delphi technique could be utilised as an effective and economical method for achieving content validity, while also providing greater scale creation transparency.

Measuring left-behind children’s discrimination perception in China: the development of discrimination perceptions of left-behind children Scale

With the advancement of urbanization in China, there are millions left-behind children whose parents left home to support families, experiencing lot of discrimination. The study aims to develop a scale measuring left-behind children’s discrimination perceptions (discrimination perceptions of left-behind children, DPLC) in China and investigate the discrimination perceptions of left-behind children using the DPLC scale. The data for 105 left-behind children were used to measure the reliability and analyze the items of the DPLC scale in the pre-test. The data for 402 left-behind children were used to verify the construct validity and internal consistency of the DPLC scale and investigate children’ discrimination perceptions of left-behind in China. This study reports the development process of the DPLC scale and presents a valid scale for measuring discrimination perceptions of left-behind in the future.

Development and Validation of a Measure to Assess Readiness to Advance Health and Equity: The Assessment for Advancing Community Transformation (AACT).

Multi-sector partnerships are core in efforts to improve population health but are often not as fully developed or positioned to advance health and equity in their communities as believed to be. Therefore, measuring the collaborations multi-sector partnerships undertake is important to document the inputs, processes, and outcomes that evolve as they work together towards achieving their goals, which ultimately creates a greater sense of shared accountability. In this study we present the development and validation of the Assessment for Advancing Community Transformation (AACT), a new tool designed to measure readiness to advance health and health equity. Development of the AACT included initial item pool creation, external evaluation from five subject matter experts, and pilot testing (including user feedback surveys) among 103 individuals. Validation of the AACT was performed using a series of confirmatory factor analyses on an expanded dataset representing 352 individuals from 49 multi-sector collaboratives across the United States. The results of our study indicate the items in the AACT align to six domains created during the scale development process, and that the tool demonstrates desirable measurement characteristics for use in research, evaluation, and practice.

Development of an Assessment Scale for the Risk of Falling in Pregnant Women.

In pregnant women, the rate of falling is similar to that of women older than 70 years. According to the literature review, there is no risk of falling assessment tool that is specific to pregnancy. The aim of the study was to develop a risk of falling assessment scale for pregnant women. This is a methodological study. The study's population consisted of pregnant women who sought follow-up care at a state hospital's maternity ward between November 2016 and November 2017. The study sample included 630 pregnant women who met the inclusion criteria and volunteered for the study. The Pregnant Women Information Form and Assessment Scale for Risk of Falling in Pregnant Women were used as data collection tools. During the scale development process, an item pool draft of 63 questions was developed and submitted to 10 experts for feedback. The findings of the content validity analysis revealed that the average of the items was 0.95, validity was good, and the number of items on the scale was reduced to 42 according to the experts' suggestions. The Cronbach α coefficient of the scale was found to be 0.604 (moderately reliable). It was discovered that the CART and QUEST algorithms on the scale were successful models for estimating the status of falls in pregnant women. A 42-item assessment scale for the risk of falling in pregnant women was developed, and it was determined that the scale was a valid and reliable tool.

Higher expectations of passengers do really sense: Development and validation a multiple scale-FliQual for air transport service quality

A large number of literatures on public transports have primarily focussed on the core perception of service quality of transit sectors. Similarly, meagre researchers have studied the augmented portion of services which, in fact, matter a lot in choosing a particular airline, but the studies have partly covered the same instead of the complete air journey. The present study proposes a complete air passenger perceived service quality (APPSQ) throughout the journey and determines all the dimensions such as availability of accessible services, food and beverage services, staff services, courteous behaviour of employees, and updated technical services with reference to the developing world. This research has attempted to develop and validate a comprehensive scale- FliQual(flight quality) to measure the contribution of the above five dimensions to APPSQ. In the line of the scale development process, both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in four studies; ultimately a five-factor model -FliQual was developed, validated at confirmatory level, and was replicated to address the existing gaps. The results revealed that passengers emphasized availability of accessible services as the first priority, followed by food and beverages, staff services consecutively as core services, whereas employee behaviour and updated technology service went secondary. Furthermore, the study explores an acceptable level of service quality, i.e., 0.81 in the range of [0.6 0.9] obtained from fuzzified results.

The AI‐IP: Minimizing the guesswork of personality scale item development through artificial intelligence

AbstractWe propose a framework for integrating various modern natural language processing (NLP) models to assist researchers with developing valid psychological scales. Transformer‐based deep neural networks offer state‐of‐the‐art performance on various natural language tasks. This project adapts the transformer model GPT‐2 to learn the structure of personality items, and generate the largest openly available pool of personality items, consisting of one million new items. We then use that artificial intelligence‐based item pool (AI‐IP) to provide a subset of potential scale items for measuring a desired construct. To better recommend construct‐related items, we train a paired neural network‐based classification BERT model to predict the observed correlation between personality items using only their text. We also demonstrate how zero‐shot models can help balance desired content domains within the scale. In combination with the AI‐IP, these models narrow the large item pool to items most correlated with a set of initial items. We demonstrate the ability of this multimodel framework to develop longer cohesive scales from a small set of construct‐relevant items. We found reliability, validity, and fit equivalent for AI‐assisted scales compared to scales developed and optimized by traditional methods. By leveraging neural networks’ ability to generate text relevant to a given topic and infer semantic similarity, this project demonstrates how to support creative and open‐ended elements of the scale development process to increase the likelihood of one's initial scale being valid, and minimize the need to modify and revalidate the scale.

A novel approach for calculating the item discrimination for Likert type of scales

Item analysis is performed by developers as an integral part of the scale development process. Thus, items are excluded from the scale depending on the item analysis prior to the factor analysis. Existing item discrimination indices are calculated based on correlation, yet items with different response patterns are likely to have a similar item discrimination index. This study proposed a new item discrimination index that can be used in Likert type of scales and examined its effect on factor analysis results. For this purpose, simulative datasets were generated, and items were excluded from the analysis according to the .20, .30 and .35 item discrimination index criteria, and exploratory factor analysis was performed for a single factor. Accordingly, it was found that more variance could be explained by a single factor with fewer items compared to other discrimination indices when the .20 criterion of the slope coefficient was used as suggested in this study. Similar findings were obtained using the .35 criterion with other discrimination indices. In this context, it is recommended to use the slope coefficient as an additional discrimination index calculation method in the scale development process.

Revisiting Risk Perception Measurement in Aviators: Scale Development and Validation

Approximately 85% of aviation accidents are attributed to pilot error (FAA, 2009). Given this knowledge, studying the thought processes of pilots, particularly how they perceive risk, is of considerable interest among aviation research. This static trend continues to emphasize the importance of seeking to understand the way in which pilots think, operate, and make decisions. Previous risk perception measures in the aviation domain have exhibited issues pertaining to construct validity, warranting the development of a new instrument. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the criticality of understanding risk perception and its implications, as well as the current scale development and validation process. Successful validation may result in a new standard measure of risk perception in aviators. In addition, this tool may facilitate further insight into pilot’s perceptions of risk, leading to a more robust understanding of decision-making in the cockpit.

Green Organizational Climate: Measurement Scale Development and Validation to Measure Green Climate Structure in Organizations

This paper aimed to develop a valid and reliable measurement scale for green organizational climate. Both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies were applied. In the research, the three-stage scale development process proposed by Schwab (1980) was be used. The conceptual framework were first clarified and a proposal pool were created by compiling the expressions in scale through a qualitative exploration study, which includes literature review, in-depth interviews and focus group studies using deductive and inductive methods. Expert opinions were sought for the examination of face validity and content validity. After the pilot application, draft scale was applied to 750 managers of businesses operating in different sectors in various provinces of Turkey. According to the results of the exploratory factor analysis, 21 items and 4 dimensions were extracted, namely green economic climate, green social climate, green digital climate, and green bureaucratic climate. The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the measurement items developed were had an acceptable level of compatibility. The cronbach alpha coefficients had sufficient reliability in all dimensions. As a result, it was seen that the green organizational climate scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool.

General Adaptation Scale for International Students: Development and Validation

Embracing a holistic and eclectic perspective, this study aims to develop and empirically test an instrument to assess international students’ general adaptation to a host country. The data were obtained from a sample of international undergraduate students (n=843) studying at a Turkish state university using purposive sampling methods of maximum variation. The analyses were conducted in two consecutive phases with two different groups of international students. Upon a meticulous data clean-up and preliminary analyses for the assumptions of normality and reliability, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to discover factor structure was utilized. In the second phase, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed through Lisrel to validate the scale structure revealed by EFA. After a rigorous and iterative scale development process, the results confirm the reliability of factors, model fit and construct validity of the General Adaptation Scale for International Students (GASIS). GASIS as a multi-dimensional instrument consists of 28 items using a five-point Likert scale with four factors labelled as academic adaptation, sociocultural adaptation, psychological adaptation, and daily life adaptation to assess international students’general adaptation levels. The final form of 28-item GASIS with psychometric features, as well as implications and limitations for future research are included in the study.

Dimensions of e-return service quality: conceptual refinement and directions for measurement

PurposeResearch regarding the quality of e-tailers’ service during product returns is sparse and the little that has been performed treats returns as recovery from failure. However, that view is outdated. E-tailers' product return practices have substantially evolved and customers' return behavior has considerably increased, in turn, influencing expectations of customers. Thus, a need arises to revise the understanding of how customers evaluate the quality of e-tailers' service during product returns. This study conceptualizes customer-perceived e-return service quality, identifies e-return's current dimensions, and offers directions for measurement.Design/methodology/approachThis study is conducted in two stages. The first stage follows an abductive approach, with a continuous back-and-forth movement between existing theory and two qualitative data sets to identify the dimensions of e-return service quality. Scale development process is started in the second stage to offer directions for measurement based on the empirically grounded dimensions.FindingsThe conceptualization of e-return service quality identifies six dimensions: (1) owning of responsibility, (2) return convenience, (3) return remedies, (4) service team support, (5) site's return friendliness, and (6) returns diligence. The factor analysis supports the six-factor solution that can be employed for developing a valid scale in future.Practical implicationsThe study suggests that e-tailers who are looking to differentiate themselves through superior e-return service quality should focus on customizing their service through excellent performance on these dimensions.Originality/valueThe paper updates and refines the understanding of service quality in the context of product returns service provided by e-tailers and thus offers a novel contribution.

Validation of a New Project Resilience Scale in the IT Sector

From a project management perspective, coping with the negative consequences of disruptions is considered a great challenge. This article aims to present the concept of project resilience and to validate, through quantitative analysis, the indicators that were developed by Rahi et al. (2019) to assess its two key dimensions: awareness and adaptive capacity. As a result of this exploratory research, eight indicators composed of 29 items that measure IT project resilience were retained. Future research, as part of the scale development process, is needed to make the project resilience scale more robust and accurate.

Sınıf Öğretmenlerinin Matematiğe İlişkin İnançları: Ölçek Uyarlama Çalışması

Bu araştırma, 2017 yılında Purnomo tarafından geliştirilen ve orijinal adı “Teachers’ Mathematics-Related Beliefs” olan ölçeğin Türk kültürüne uyarlanarak sınıf öğretmenlerinin matematiğe ilişkin inançlarını tespit etmeye yarayan bir ölçme aracı elde etmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Orijinal ölçek, matematiğin doğası, matematik öğretimi ve matematikte öğrenmeyi değerlendirme olmak üzere toplam 3 boyuttan meydana gelmektedir. Yazar, ölçeği geliştirirken her boyut için ayrı ayrı AFA, DFA ve güvenirlik testi uygulamıştır. Ölçek geliştirme sürecinde araştırmanın tüm katılımcılarını sınıf öğretmenleri oluşturmuştur. İlgili ölçeğin Türkçeye çevirisi yapılırken geri orijinaline çeviri tekniği kullanılmıştır. Ölçek uyarlama çalışmasının örneklemini 216 sınıf öğretmeni oluşturmaktadır. Ölçeğin yapı geçerliği ve faktör yapısını incelemek için her boyuta AFA uygulanmıştır. Faktör yapısının verilerle ne düzeyde uyum sağladığını tespit etmek için her boyuta DFA uygulanmıştır. Ölçeğin güvenirliğini belirlemek için tüm ölçeğe ve her alt boyuta güvenirlik testi uygulanmıştır. Sonuç olarak Türk kültürüne uyarlanan Sınıf Öğretmenlerinin Matematiğe İlişkin İnançları ölçeğinin geçerli ve güvenilir bir ölçme aracı olduğu sonucu elde edilmiştir.

Scale Development and Validation of a Multi-dimensional Measure of Workplace Favoritism

Workplace favoritism research has been steady but limited for decades, yet a rigorously validated, comprehensive measure is not available to researchers. Furthermore, there continues to be concern among management scholars as to whether the concept is worthy of being examined as a stand-alone construct. A general consensus among management scholars is that favoritism is similar enough to organizational justice that it cannot provide additional explanatory value in employee emotional, attitudinal, or behavioral outcomes. This study challenges that ideology through the development and validation of a multi-dimensional workplace favoritism scale that can explain noticeably more variance in turnover intention than what organizational justice dimensions (i.e., procedural, distributive, interpersonal, and informational) can account for. Following Hinkin’s (1998) suggested approach to scale development and procedures used by Akremi and colleagues (Akremi, Gond, Swaen, Roeck, & Igalens, 2018), a five-phase scale development and confirmation process revealed three favoritism subdimensions including cronyism, nepotism, and a dimension related to an individual’s pleasantness and agreeableness. Results indicate that the sub-dimensional favoritism scales are valid and have predictive abilities that go beyond that of which can be accounted for by organizational justice measures.

Psychological Flexibility for Entrepreneurs: A Validation of the Wishing-Experiencing-Doing Scale

Entrepreneurs face high levels of risk and uncertainty on a daily basis. To cope with this, the internal resource “Psychological Flexibility” is put to the foreground. It is a well-known construct from Psychology measuring whether a person is able to adapt to fluctuating situational demands, reconfigure mental resources, shift perspective, and balance competing desires, needs, and life domains. It proved to be positively related to mental health and well-being of individuals, but given that it incorporates repeated interaction between people and their environmental contexts, it does require context-specific measurement instruments. In the Entrepreneurship field, such an instrument is lacking. This study focusses on the development and validation of a Psychological Flexibility measure, tailored to an entrepreneurial context. For this, we applied a rigorous scale development process on a dataset of 875 entrepreneurs. From two studies (study 1, n=532; study 2, n=343), two consecutive formative, multidimensional constructs emerge: A 15-item Wishing, Experiencing and Doing (WED) scale (study 1), and a shorter 6-item measure, the WED-S scale (study 2), appropriate for time-constrained measurement initiatives. Both scales exhibit good psychometric properties and are proven to be reliable and valid measures.

Mathematics teachers’ assessment of mathematical understanding

Mathematical understanding is considered to have a multidimensional structure and an important place in mathematics teaching. The focus of the assessments in mathematics courses is on the multidimensional evaluation of mathematical understanding. However, a review of related literature shows the lack of studies on assessing mathematical understanding using multidimensional structures. For this reason, the current study attempted to develop a scale for assessing teachers' mathematical understanding. The instrument development model, an exploratory sequential mixed methods model, has been used in line with this aim during the scale’s development. The study’s qualitative data were collected through a mathematical understanding assessment form and semi-structured interviews developed by the authors. Qualitative data emerged from 17 mathematics teachers working in middle schools or high schools who were determined using the easy access sampling method. Five themes were arrived at from the content analysis with the obtained qualitative data: applying rules, transferring knowledge, generating questions and solutions, generalizing, and exploring information. The initial version of the instrument prepared in accordance with these themes was applied to a total of 501 primary school mathematics preservice teachers from nine different universities in Turkey during the 2018 spring semester. Cronbach’s alpha (α) assessment was performed for the scale’s reliability. Item-total correlations were calculated as item statistics. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were applied to test the scale’s construct validity. The item loadings for the scale were seen to vary between.431 and.759 in this process; the reliability of the sub-dimensions and the scale’s fit indices were seen to be at sufficient levels. As a result of all the performed analyses, a scale form consisting of 21 items and five sub-dimension was obtained. The results from the scale development process show that the preservice teachers took into account the factor of transferring knowledge the most and the factor of producing questions and solution pathways the least.