Staff Questionnaire for Secondary Schools : An Investigation of the Relationship Among Judgemental Categories and Empirical Constructs of an Instrument Created for the Connecticut Secondary School Development Project

This study is concerned with a number of constructs thought to be important to school improvement processes. Although much has been written about these constructs (e.g.. Instructional Leadership, High Expectations), little research exists on procedures for measuring them or their relationships. An instrument containing 12 research-based constructs has been created for use in the assessment phase of the Connecticut Secondary School Development Project. The Staff Questionnaire is intended to assess perceptions of school effectiveness among the professional staff of public secondary schools. Typically it is employed at the beginning of a multi-year, school improvement project. Although created for use within Connecticut, the Staff Questionnaire is being used throughout the United States in school systems as diverse as Arkansas City, Kansas, and San Diego, California. Response data from some 2,400 professionals in the schools which participated in the fieldtesting of the Staff Questionnaire (revised version) were analyzed to determine the latent structure of that instrument. Specifically, the principal components of the Staff Questionnaire were identified, and were compared to relationships among variables as hypothesized in the school effectiveness literature. The importance of this construct validation is that it contributes to the theoretical base upon which so many hundreds of current school improvement efforts depend.