Construction and validation of institutional identity scale for university students

Abstract

The current study presents the validation process of a measure of institutional identity for university students. The research is composed of two studies. Study I consisted of the generation of an item pool based on the literature review, semi-structured interviews, and expert opinion, which were administered to a convenient sample of university students (n = 707; 300 males and 407 females) in Pakistan. Exploratory factor analysis yielded a two-factor structure with 20 items, and the factors were named commitment (α = 0.84) and crisis (α = 0.74). The two-factor solution was confirmed through confirmatory factor analysis, which revealed an excellent model fit with the two-factor structure. Study II reports on the convergent and divergent validity of the scale which was carried out on an independent sample (n = 120). Results provided evidence of convergent validity as depression correlated negatively with the commitment subscale and positively with the crisis subscale. Divergent validity was ensured by a non-significant correlation between the subscales of the newly developed scale and a measure of religious belief. Moreover, the implications and limitations of the study are discussed.