Building an Instrument for Measuring Academic Administrator and Faculty Member Perceptions of the Workload Allocation Process as it Applies to Higher Education

Abstract

The focus of this study was to build and test an instrument that measures academic administrator and faculty member perceptions of the workload allocation process. The primary findings of this study are founded in the initial use of the developed instrument. Sixty academic administrators and 320 faculty members from colleges of education at 19 high research universities in the southeastern United States were sent the 35 item instrument via electronic survey. Survey items were placed into five unidentified domains related to the workload allocation process. Based on the data from the survey, t-tests were conducted for each domain and for the composite mean score to determine whether statistically significant differences existed between academic administrators' and faculty members' perceptions of the workload allocation process. Results indicated the two groups differ in their perceptions sporadically throughout the instrument, but consistently within one domain.