The development of the organizational silence scale: Validity-reliability study

Abstract

The aim of this study is to develop an Organizational Silence Scale based on primary school teachers’ perceptions. The sample set of research were chosen from the population with the multi-stage sampling method. The first stage was stratified sampling and the second stage was simple random sampling. The sample of the study consisted of 15 schools and 414 teachers were have been working in primary schools of Ministry of National Education in 5 Central education districts of Aksaray, Turkey. For this purpose, an Organizational Silence Scale comprised of 38 items was developed. According to preliminary study on the scale, exploratory factor analysis was done. The KMO value was 0,98 and the Barlett`s Test of Sphericity reached statistical significance and 5 factors were obtained with the remained 36 items. Factor analysis of the scale revealed that the evaluation items cluster into 5 factors that account for 87,76% of the total variance. The explained variance of factors were 18,49%; 18,49%; 16,92%; 16,38% and 15,30% respectively. According to the literature, these factors were named respectively as Individual, Administrative, Organizational Culture, Colleagues and Pressure Groups. In addition to test validity of the scale, first and second order confirmatory factor analysis were conducted.  Also, Cronbach Alpha values ranged from 0,97 to 0,99. Total Cronbach Alpha value was 0,95 and item total value was between 0,79 and 0,84. The obtained values of the scale showed that scale is valid and reliable.