Degree Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
1981
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Psychology
Abstract
Industrial/organizational psychologists have studied organizational climate for 20 years. This construct has been besieged with many problems. First, climate has been found to be empirically similar to other organizational constructs, resulting from a lack of conceptual boundaries. Second, climate has been assessed by aggregating data of individuals. The aggregation of individual data confounds the sources of (individual and group) variation. This study is an attempt to partition the variance of aggregated attitude items into individual and group variation, then factor analyze the separate sources of variation. The comparison of the factor structures then determines whether the measures are assessing a group or individual construct;Differences were found in the factor structures of the individual vs. the group analyses. Use of measures comprised by unpartitioned data tends to produce confounded variables containing both individual and group variance. Current research uses measuring devices of an undetermined level of analysis (confounded constructs) causing inferences from the study to be misleading in any cases.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.31274/rtd-180813-4645
Publisher
Digital Repository @ Iowa State University, http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/
Copyright Owner
Mark Tuttle
Copyright Date
1981
Language
en
Proquest ID
AAI8122570
File Format
application/pdf
File Size
118 pages
Recommended Citation
Tuttle, Mark, "Inferring organizational-level constructs from individual-level data: a factor analytic approach to identify organizational climate " (1981). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 6861.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/6861
