1. Work Ethic Scale for Middle School Students.
- Author
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Williams, Robert L., Bush, Vivian J., and Park, Soo-Hee
- Abstract
A sample of 1,239 students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades of 3 public schools used a "yes" or "no" format to respond to a 12-item Work Ethic Scale (WES) designed to measure students' intrinsic and extrinsic valuing of work. Analysis shows that: (1) the WES was minimally related to a measure of social desirability; (2) item-remainder correlations were between 0.20 and 0.46; (3) the internal consistency was 0.70; (4) WES scores were significantly related to achievement and work-habits ratings; (5) the negatively worded WES items were more strongly related to criterion measures than were the positively worded items; and (6) the WES consisted of two empirical factors (utility of work and commitment to hard work). Demographic comparisons revealed that girls scored higher than boys on the WES, that European Americans scored higher than Hispanic Americans, but not higher than African Americans, and that eighth graders scored higher than sixth and seventh graders. (Contains 5 tables and 26 references.) (Author/SLD)
- Published
- 2001