Construct Validity of the Educators Survey for a Sample of Middle School Teachers

Abstract

For a sample of 150 middle school teachers (101 females and 49 males) from a suburban California community, the major purpose of this investigation was to ascertain whether the factor structure of the 22-item Educators Survey (ES) comprising three subscales reflecting three dimensions of burnout-Emotional Exhaustion (9 items), Depersonalization (5 items), and Personal Accomplishment (8 items)-would be more interpretable within a framework of either a two-factor or a three-factor conceptualization of its underlying constructs. In a comprehensive reanalysis of the factor structure of the correlation matrices of item scores from six studies using the Maslach Burnout Inventory, from which the parallel form of the ES was derived for use with educators rather than with other professional groups, Walkey and Green expressed a preference for a two-factor structure comprising a fusion of Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization factors into one factor named Core of Burnout and for a second factor identified as Personal Accomplishment. Use of oblique and orthogonal exploratory factor analyses revealed a high degree of simple structure for either a two-factor or three-factor solution. Evaluation of a one-factor (a general dimension) model and of two- and three-dimensional orthogonal and oblique models through application of confirmatory maximum likelihood factor analyses indicated that the three-factor oblique model accounted for the greatest amount of covariation among the 22 items of the ES, but that the two-factor oblique model afforded nearly as close a degree of fit as that afforded by the three-factor oblique model as well as a meaningful alternative conceptualization of the factor structure of the ES.