The organizational health of high schools and dimensions of faculty trust.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Climate and trust are both important aspects of school environments. An understanding of those aspects of organizational climate that influence faculty trust in specific school groups may help to refine the concept of organizational trust. The major aim of this study is to examine the relationship between dimensions of faculty trust and aspects of health in high schools.
The relationship between faculty trust in students and faculty trust in parents is blurred. The question of whether they are separate or unitary concepts in high schools remains and will be addressed in this study. The general hypothesis of this study is that school climate will be positively related to faculty trust; however school climate is viewed from the multi-dimensional perspective and so is faculty trust. Thus, the research addresses what dimensions of organizational health best predict each aspect of faculty trust.
Researchers collected data from 98 high schools throughout the state of Ohio. Half of each school faculty was administered the Organizational Health Inventory and the other half was administered the Trust Survey. Additional data came from statewide summaries obtained from the Ohio Department of Education. The unit of analysis in this study was the school.
Descriptive statistics were summarized for all variables. Correlation coefficients were computed for each aspect of health with each dimension of faculty trust. Further testing of variables was conducted using multiple regression analysis. In addition, factor analysis was performed on both research instruments.
The general hypothesis that school health would be positively related to faculty trust was supported; however different dimensions of health were more or less important depending on which aspect of faculty trust was targeted. Furthermore, Faculty Trust in Parents and Faculty Trust in Students were found to form a single, unidimensional factor, Trust in Clients, at the high school level. Additionally, the instruments employed in this research were found to possess favorable factor structures consistent with their theoretical underpinnings. Finally, although organizational health was used as the independent variable, the direction of causality is not clear. In fact, it is suspected that the relationships between school health and faculty trust are reciprocal.