Teachers' Organizational Commitment Scale: A Validity and Reliability Study.

The purpose of this study is to develop a reliable and valid scale that measures teachers' commitment. The sample of the study consists of two separate teacher groups. The first group consists of 310 voluntary teachers working in primary and secondary schools in Malatya province. The second group consists of 201 teachers working in 20 different schools. In order to test the construct validity of the scale, the data obtained from the first group were subjected first to exploratory factor analysis and later to confirmatory factor analysis. In order to test the criterion validity of the scale Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) and Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) were administered on a second group of teachers. For reliability studies, internal consistency coefficient and test-retest correlation coefficient were estimated using the relevant software. Findings obtained from exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis showed the scale has one factor structure with 17 items. Results revealed that Teachers' Organizational Commitment Scale (TOCS) has a high positive correlation with MSQ and average negative correlation with MBI. The internal consistency of the scale was found ".96", and test-retest correlation coefficient was found ".88". These results show that TOCS is a valid and reliable scale to measure teachers' commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]