Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1999

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Education

Major Professor

Robert L. Williams

Committee Members

Don Dickinson, Dianne Whitaker, Delores Smith

Abstract

Attitudes about work coalesce throughout one's childhood to form a person's work ethic. Although a work ethic begins to develop in the early grades, most students do not make the connection until middle school between their attitude toward work and their future success. The purpose of this study was to develop a psychometrically sound Work-Ethic Scale to be utilized with middle school students. This 12-item scale is part of a larger survey called the Middle School Survey and measures work ethic based on the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits of work. The survey also includes 12 items related to devaluing of school and 4 items measuring social desirability.The Work-Ethic Scale was administered by social studies teachers to 1239 students in three U.S. middle schools (a suburban school in the northeastern United States And an urban and a suburban school in the southeastern United States). Social studies teachers were also asked to rate each student's past academic performance as either"poor," "average," or "outstanding." In addition, teachers filled out a Student Work-Habits Form for the two students in their class they judged to have the best work habits and the two they judged to have the worst work habits. Internal consistency for the 12 work-ethic items was determined by using the Kuder-Richardson formula 20. Social Desirability of student responses was investigated by correlating the work-ethic scores with the social-desirability (SD) scores. Work-ethic scores were also analyzed by demographic factors (i.e., gender, grade level, and ethnicity), using analysis of variance and follow-up t-tests.IVThe average work-ethic (WE) score for the total sample was 8.31, well above the midpoint of the 0 to 12 scale. Girls obtained a significantly higher WE mean than boys,and eighth graders obtained significantly higher WE mean than both sixth and seventh graders. For the three largest ethnic groups in the sample, Caucasians scored significantlyhigher on the WE scale than Ifispanics, but not higher than African Americans.Both classical item statistics and item response theory showed that most WE items tended to yield pro-work responses. Overall, the negatively worded items produced more balanced responding than did the positive items. The item analysis also indicated that most items were moderately correlated with scores on the WE scale. In general, the negative items were more highly correlated with the total WE scores than were the positive items. A test of internal consistency showed that the WE scale was marginallyIreliable (.70), with all items contributing similarly to the internal consistency of the scale.The validity of the WE scale was examined via an assessment of both criterion related and construct-related validity. Concurrent and known-groups validity assessment showed evidence of criterion-related validity. The combined negative items were more strongly linked to the performance ratings than were the combined positive items.Construct validity was examined through a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The conclusion from the factor analysis was that the instrument is best represented as a two-factor scale, with the primary factor reflecting the objective benefits of work and the secondary factor reflecting the affective comfort with one's work.Some differences in trends were found across schools. The suburban school in theSoutheast (school 3) had a significantly higher WE mean than the other two schools.and the urban school in the Southeast (school 2) had the lowest WE mean. All WE meansacross schools were significantly different fi-om each other (minimum p < 05).Two findings from school 2 (the urban Southeast school) suggest caution in interpreting the data fi^om that school. It had the lowest K-R 20 coefficient and the highestSD mean of any school. Nonetheless, one group comparison in school 2 is worth noting;African American students obtained a significantly higher (p < .0001) WE mean (7.83)than did the Caucasian students (6.19). This trend is different from that found in the total sample. The credibility of this ethnic comparison in school 2 is reinforced by the similarSD means for African American and Caucasian students in that school.The largest number of students in the total sample came from school 3 (n = 644).Two features of the data fi-om school 3 gave added confidence in the results: the internalconsistency on the WE scale was as high as that obtained in any school, and the SD mean for school 3 was significantly lower than those obtained by the other schools. The most unequivocal evidence for known-groups validity of the WE scale came from this school,with significant differences between all achievement and work-habits groups. In contrast to the ethnic comparison in school 2, Caucasians obtained a slightly higher, although not statistically significant, WE mean (8.70) than did the African Americans (8.48) in school 3.

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