Validation of the work characteristics scales applied to educational university environments

Abstract

Purpose: Present the adaptation of Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) as a diagnostic tool in teaching methods in university classrooms and check the reliability and validity of the scales of the JDS model adapted to teaching, as well as its factor structure.

Design/methodology/approach: We analyzed the data from a sample with 149 students from the faculty of business administration, a Spanish University, in 2008-2009, by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis using the multivariate technique of structural equations.

Findings and Originality/value: The model has proven to be successful and may be an effective tool to evaluate the process of change towards new methodologies that are currently undergoing active universities.

Research limitations/implications: In future research should be tested the predictive validity of this instrument compared to other variables of interest, such as student satisfaction. It would also be necessary to extend the analysis to different populations and at different university levels.

Practical implications: Provides researchers a tool to measure the motivational profile of the position measurement model which is valid and reliable.

Social implications: In the current process of change that is taking place in universities according to the plan developed by the European Space of Higher Education, validated tools such as JDS teaching adapted for facilitating this process through the diagnosis, implementation and required to track changes in university classrooms in both the methodologies used in class, as in the relation teacher - student.

Originality/value: The JDS allows teachers to make an assessment of the perceptions of students in front of his teaching methodology and to their role as manager of the classroom.