Validity and Use of the School-Level Environment Questionnaire.

The development and validation of a new instrument, the School-Level Environment Questionnaire (SLEQ), are described. The SLEQ measures teachers' perceptions of psychosocial dimensions of the environment of the school. The SLEQ consists of 56 items, each scored on a five-point scale, and grouped in eight scales: (1) student support; (2) affiliation; (3) professional interest; (4) staff freedom; (5) participatory decision making; (6) innovation; (7) resource adequacy; and (8) work pressure. The SLEQ was validated with three samples from Australian schools: 83 teachers from 19 metropolitan elementary and secondary schools in Sydney; 34 secondary school beginning teachers in New South Wales; and 109 elementary and secondary teachers in Tasmania. Results indicate that each SLEQ scale displayed satisfactory internal consistency with satisfactory discriminant validity results, suggesting that distinct, but somewhat overlapping, aspects of school environment were measured. The SLEQ was used, in the Tasmanian sample, to determine differences in the climates of elementary and secondary schools. It was also used to evaluate teachers' efforts to improve school environment in a study of 15 elementary teachers in a pretest/posttest evaluation of improvement efforts. Four tables and two graphs present data from these studies; an appendix provides the SLEQ. A 33-item list of references is included. (SLD)