A Reliability and Validity Study for Researching Teachers' Perceptions Related to Their Psychological Capital

The field of education, which is one of the most important areas of our developing country, needs to be developed and renewed both technologically and organizational side. Scientists, from all over the world, have become pioneers in the field of education with their new, developing and renewing knowledge. One of the famous scientists, Luthans has come up with an idea named 'Psychological Capital'. This subject has become one of the most important subjects that have been searched for more than thirteen years in the education world. As it is known, the most important component in education is teacher and one of the factors that influence the teachers' guality of work is their psychological capital. Psychological capital indicates that if a man's psychology is directed in a positive way he can manage lots of things and when he acrosses with a difficulty, he can handle it easily. The aim of this research is to develop a scale that measures the psychological capitals of the teachers and to demonstrate their psychological capital perceptions. This research is a descriptive research. The sample of the research is constituted by surveying 315 teachers.The samples were chosen randomly. In order to develop the scale exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis was done. In consequence of this research the perception psychological capital of the teachers were specified. After that the results were argued within the frame of related subject. In the education year of 2013-2014, in the city of Gaziantep the total 315 teachers from public schools were sampled for the study. In order to develop the scale, firstly related literature was scanned and an item pool was constituted. Then a draft form consisting 58 items was formed. After having taken experts' view and having made required arrangements, the draft form was applied preliminarily. Following to that, the analysis of reliability and validity was done and the items whose item total statistics value is below 0.50 w were excluded. So 25 items were left for the scale. As a result of validity analysis, for the explanatory factor analysis, the scale's KMO value is .093,3, Barlett test is .00 (p<.01) and the total explained variance is %53.3. The subscales of the scale are determined as hope ness, optimism, psychological stability. These subscales are found to be consistent with the literature. As a result of confirmatory factor analysis, model's fit index obtained via DFA was examined and Chi-square value (x2=913.92, N= 308, sd=354, p=0.00) is observed to be significant. Fit index values are; RMSEA; 0.074, SRMR; 0.13, GFI; 0.81, AGFI; 0.77, CFI; 0.96, IFI; 0.94, NFI; 0.094; x2/df = 2.56. These values show that the scale is a good model. For the reliability of the scale of whose internal consistency was analyzed, Cronbach Alpha value is estimated to be 0.93. When analyzed as subscales, whole subscales values were above .70. As a result, a reliable and valid scale with 3 sub scales consisting total 25 items has been obtained.