VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY OF THE TRUST TOWARDS LEADERS INVENTORY IN EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

Abstract

This study aims at identifying the level of trust in the leaders and describes the psychometric properties of the instrument of trust against the leaders modified according to the situation and the uniqueness of the organization’s management system of education in Malaysia. The study was conducted through a survey using a questionnaire as a research instrument. A total of 19 items in Malay language translation which have been modified from the original instrument Affect- and Cognition-based Trust built by McAllister (1995) were used for this study. Data for this study were obtained from 251 randomly selected lecturers from four polytechnics. The results of factor analysis obtained two factors explaining 73.1 percent of the variance. Meanwhile, the level of trust in the leaders through descriptive analysis found that two dimensions of trust in leaders based on the affective and cognitive based trust showed high level from the perspective of the lecturers. These results demonstrate the reliability of the instrument modified on trust in leaders for this study could represent a desired two good dimensions as the original version of McAllister (1995) and provide strong justification for using the translated instrument in the education organizations in Malaysia. In practice, this finding suggests the utility of strengthening organizational support for increasing the potential among the followers.