Kee Kong Tan

Date of Award

5-21-1998

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Foundations & Research

First Advisor

Richard Landry

Abstract

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a continuous process to improve the quality, bureaucracy, and productivity of an organization. TQM in higher education started in the early 1980s and has received attention in improving quality of education. There is a need to construct an instrument to measure TQM in higher education because the instrument would provide an assessment and implementation framework for any institution that wishes to implement or evaluate the quality of its education. Although the process of construction of an instrument is common in many measurement studies, studies regarding the construct validation of an instrument to measure TQM in higher education (education) is almost nonexistent. The present study is an attempt to construct validate such purpose.This study constructed a 70-item instrument to measure TQM in higher education and establish its construct validity. The measurement is based on (a) content validity, (b) reliability, and (c) criterion validity. A pool of 140 test items was generated from Bonstingl's conceptualization of TQM's 14 points. The process of classification of items by five judges was employed to content validate these 140 items. The process reduced the 140 items to a pool of 84 content-validated items which were mailed to a sample of 175 full time faculty (25 per institution) around South Dakota, Minnesota, and North Dakota. The 84-item survey yielded a return rate of 59%.These 84 content-validated items were analyzed for their internal consistency on a series of reliability tests. Cronbach alpha tests reduced the 84 items to a smaller pool of 70 test items before the test of criterion validity. Criterion validity was applied by a series of ONEWAY ANOVA tests for the final 70 items along with five additional variables regarding the directions and implementations of TQM in respondents' institutions to complete the process of construction validation. Discussion of results and future research recommendations of the study are presented.

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