Educational Works Components Study

Abstract

The Educational Work Components Study (EWCS) is a specialized psychometric instrument designed to measure work motivation, occupational value orientations, and job attribute preferences among educators, school administrators, and educational personnel. Adapted by Cecil G. Miskel and Leonard E. Heller (1973) from Edgar F. Borgatta’s (1968) industrial Work Components Study (WCS), the scale operationalizes the multidimensional structure of occupational motivation within public school organizations. Grounded theoretically in Frederick Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene (Two-Factor) Theory, the EWCS bridges industrial-organizational psychology and educational administration by examining how intrinsic motivators and extrinsic hygiene factors manifest within the bureaucratic and pedagogical realities of educational institutions.

The instrument consists of 56 self-report items evaluated on a 5-point Likert desirability scale ranging from 1 (Extremely Undesirable. Would never take the job) to 5 (Extremely Desirable. Would favor job greatly). Psychometric evaluation across a normative stratified sample of 745 educational professionals—comprising undergraduate education seniors, graduate students, practicing school administrators, and classroom teachers—established a robust six-factor orthogonal and oblique latent structure. These dimensions comprise: (1) Potential for Personal Challenge and Development (8 items), (2) Competitiveness Desirability and Reward of Success (7 items), (3) Tolerance for Work Pressure (9 items), (4) Conservative Security (11 items), (5) Willingness to Seek Reward in Spite of Uncertainty vs. Avoidance of Uncertainty (10 items), and (6) Surround Concern (11 items). Internal consistency estimates demonstrated strong reliability, with subscale Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging from .73 to .83. The EWCS has served as a foundational assessment in research investigating teacher retention, leadership mobility, school climate, and organizational commitment.

Keywords

Educational Work Components Study, EWCS, work motivation, Herzberg two-factor theory, educational administration, teacher motivation, school organizational climate, job satisfaction, psychometrics, occupational incentives, hygiene factors, work pressure tolerance

Authors

The Educational Work Components Study was adapted and psychometrically validated by:

• Cecil G. Miskel, Ed.D. — Professor Emeritus of Educational Administration and former Dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Previously a faculty member at the University of Kansas, Dr. Miskel is an internationally recognized scholar in organizational theory, educational leadership, and policy politics, having served as editor of the Educational Administration Quarterly and author of seminal texts on educational leadership and administration.
• Leonard E. Heller, Ed.D. — Researcher and administrative scholar in educational leadership, organizational behavior, and medical education administration, affiliated with the University of Kansas during the instrument’s initial development and later serving in executive academic roles at the University of Kentucky.

The instrument directly adapts the original industrial measurement framework formulated by Edgar F. Borgatta, Ph.D., and colleagues (1968) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Educational Work Components Study is to provide a reliable, theoretically rigorous, and empirically validated measure of work motivation tailored specifically to the structural, cultural, and environmental realities of educational institutions. During the 1960s and 1970s, organizational psychologists recognized that empirical instruments calibrated in corporate, industrial, and manufacturing settings frequently failed to capture the unique occupational realities of public sector employees, particularly educators. While classic industrial tools presumed direct connections between individual productivity, piece-rate compensation, commercial competition, and vertical corporate mobility, public school environments operated under institutionalized salary schedules, tenure protections, professional autonomy, and complex socio-emotional goals.

Miskel and Heller (1973) sought to resolve this psychometric disconnect by revising Borgatta’s (1968) Work Components Study (WCS). Their objective was to investigate how educators evaluate job-related incentives, risks, demands, and environmental conditions. The EWCS measures an individual’s underlying motivational profile—that is, the psychological attractiveness or valence that an educator attaches to varying conditions of organizational life. The instrument assesses both intrinsic cognitive drives (such as the need for creative self-actualization, autonomy, and professional development) and extrinsic orientations (such as security seeking, sensitivity to physical surroundings, organizational policies, and interpersonal relations).

In applied research, the EWCS functions as a diagnostic and predictive instrument across multiple operational domains:

• Educational Leadership and Administrative Selection: Differentiating the motivational structures of candidates seeking administrative advancement (e.g., superintendencies, principalships) versus career classroom educators, particularly regarding risk propensity, decision-making under uncertainty, and tolerance for work overload (Fuqua, 1983; Hatley, 1991).
• Teacher Recruitment and Retention: Analyzing the alignment between the motivational expectations of pre-service or re-entry teachers and the actual organizational reward systems of school districts (Dunton, 1983).
• Organizational Climate and Job Satisfaction: Assessing how school bureaucratic structures interact with individual motivational drives to influence professional burnout, institutional commitment, and innovative instructional behavior (Simms, 1981).
• Comparative Professional Research: Facilitating cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons of motivational orientations across varying career stages, gender classifications, institutional types, and socio-economic district settings.

Psychological Construct

The EWCS measures work motivation as a multifaceted construct comprising six distinct psychological dimensions. Rather than viewing motivation as a unitary continuum ranging from low to high, the instrument conceptualizes an employee’s motivational orientation through distinct motivational and environmental preference vectors:

1. Potential for Personal Challenge and Development (8 Items)

This subscale assesses the degree to which an individual desires an occupational environment that facilitates creativity, professional responsibility, autonomy, self-direction, and the continuous exercise of intellectual ability. Representing the core intrinsic motivator of Herzberg’s theoretical schema, individuals scoring high on this dimension prioritize intrinsic self-actualization over external rewards. Illustrative scale statements include: “There is opportunity for creative work” (Item 13) and “I would always have a chance to learn something new” (Item 42).

2. Competitiveness Desirability and Reward of Success (7 Items)

This dimension measures an individual’s orientation toward competitive work environments wherein personal accomplishment is explicitly recognized, performance is public, and monetary or prestige-based rewards are tied directly to merit. It reflects an achievement-oriented, performance-contingent reward mindset. Scale items capture this drive through operational environments where merit pay is prioritized and accountability is enforced, such as: “Salary increases would be strictly a matter of how much you accomplished for the school district” (Item 3) and “Competition would be open and encouraged” (Item 37).

3. Tolerance for Work Pressure (9 Items)

This subscale evaluates a respondent’s psychological willingness to accept, manage, and absorb intense, unpredictable, or excessive job demands, including long hours, crisis management, physical or emotional strain, and the blurring of professional and personal life boundaries. Rather than viewing pressure purely as a stressor, this factor measures the extent to which an individual is unfazed by, or even thrives under, rigorous workloads. Representative items include: “The work might be excessive sometimes” (Item 12) and “I might sometimes have to take work home with me” (Item 22).

4. Conservative Security (11 Items)

The Conservative Security factor measures an individual’s preference for organizational stability, predictability, standardized operating procedures, established policy compliance, and guaranteed employment. High scorers actively avoid professional ambiguity and performance risks, favoring civil service protections, routine tasks, and programmatic step-and-column pay scales. Key items reflecting this construct include: “The pay is not too high, but the job is secure” (Item 20) and “The emphasis would be on carrying out clearly outlined school district policies” (Item 2).

5. Willingness to Seek Reward in Spite of Uncertainty vs. Avoidance of Uncertainty (10 Items)

This dimension operationalizes organizational risk-taking behavior and tolerance for institutional ambiguity. It measures an individual’s readiness to accept precarious, unstable, or highly volatile employment conditions in exchange for intellectually stimulating work, professional excitement, or exceptional reward opportunities. Conversely, low scores indicate high risk aversion and avoidance of uncertainty. Illustrative items include: “I could get fired easily, but the work would be very interesting” (Item 1) and “The work might run out, but it would be extremely interesting while it lasted” (Item 19).

6. Surround Concern (11 Items)

Grounded explicitly in the extrinsic “hygiene” factors of dual-factor theory, this subscale measures an employee’s preoccupation with the physical, social, geographic, and environmental context of the workplace. It captures the desirability of attractive physical facilities, modern amenities, congenial supervisors and colleagues, quality fringe benefits, and favorable community environments. Scale items measuring these conditions include: “The physical working conditions would be attractive” (Item 23), “The fringe benefits are very good” (Item 29), and “The supervisors are nice people” (Item 44).

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the Educational Work Components Study rests on the synthesis of Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory (Herzberg, Mausner, & Snyderman, 1959) and Edgar F. Borgatta’s psychometric operationalization of work value structures (Borgatta et al., 1968), integrated within the unique context of open educational systems.

The Dual-Factor Foundation

Herzberg’s classical formulation posited that job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction do not exist on a single bi-polar continuum, but are instead driven by two fundamentally independent sets of factors:

• Motivators (Intrinsic Factors): Factors related directly to the job content itself, including achievement, recognition, challenging work, responsibility, advancement, and psychological growth. The presence of motivators produces positive job satisfaction and intrinsic engagement; their absence results in a neutral state of no satisfaction rather than active dissatisfaction.
• Hygiene Factors (Extrinsic Factors): Contextual elements surrounding the execution of work, including district policies, administrative supervision, salary structure, interpersonal relationships, working conditions, and security. Adequate hygiene factors prevent employee dissatisfaction, but cannot, by themselves, engender positive work motivation or creative self-actualization.

The EWCS translates Herzberg’s framework into psychometrically differentiated subscales. Potential for Personal Challenge and Development represents the quintessential Herzbergian motivator factor. Conversely, Surround Concern and Conservative Security represent classic hygiene dimensions. By operationalizing these factors as continuous variables, the EWCS allows researchers to determine whether an educator’s motivational profile is predominantly intrinsic, hygiene-seeking, or a balanced configuration.

Borgatta’s Work Components Formulation

Borgatta (1968) identified that Herzberg’s qualitative critical-incident methodology suffered from attribution bias and could not sufficiently account for individual personality differences in risk tolerance and competitive drive. Borgatta developed the original Work Components Study to quantitatively measure the perceived desirability of specific job characteristics across industrial environments. However, public schools differ markedly from industrial corporations: they possess loosely coupled governance structures, civil service tenured employment, community-accountable school boards, and pedagogical output goals that resist simple quantitative metrics. Miskel and Heller (1973) modified the wording, structural framing, and institutional referents of Borgatta’s items to align precisely with school district environments (e.g., replacing corporate management terms with “school district policies” and educational administrative references).

Expectancy and Bureaucratic Theories

The EWCS also incorporates principles from Victor Vroom’s Expectancy Theory (1964), particularly the concept of valence—the psychological attractiveness or value an individual places on an organizational outcome. When respondents rate the desirability of job conditions, they articulate the subjective valences guiding their occupational choices. Furthermore, the inclusion of risk and security dimensions reflects structural theories of educational bureaucracy (e.g., Bidwell, 1965; Lortie, 1975), which demonstrate how institutional safeguards against uncertainty often conflict with organizational innovation and individual entrepreneurial efforts within schools.

Validity

The validity of the Educational Work Components Study has been empirically substantiated through structural, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related investigations across various educational samples.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity was established in Miskel and Heller’s (1973) foundational investigation using a stratified random sample of 745 educational personnel. The authors conducted both Varimax orthogonal and Maxplane oblique R-factor analyses to verify that the items conformed empirically to the hypothesized theoretical dimensions. The mathematical convergence between the orthogonal and oblique factor solutions demonstrated structural stability, indicating that the six extracted factors represent distinct latent constructs rather than statistical artifacts.

Discriminant and Group-Difference Validity

The EWCS demonstrates strong discriminant validity across diverse organizational roles within the educational hierarchy:

• Administrators vs. Classroom Teachers: Miskel and Heller (1973) demonstrated statistically significant differences between central office administrators/principals and classroom teachers. Administrators exhibited significantly higher scores on Competitiveness Desirability, Tolerance for Work Pressure, and Willingness to Seek Reward in Spite of Uncertainty, reflecting the competitive selection processes and open-ended responsibilities of educational leadership. Conversely, career classroom teachers scored higher on Conservative Security and Surround Concern.
• Pre-Service vs. Experienced Personnel: Significant differences emerged across career developmental stages. Undergraduate education seniors scored higher on Potential for Personal Challenge and Development but demonstrated lower realistic appraisal of Tolerance for Work Pressure compared to veteran practicing teachers.

Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity

Subsequent doctoral dissertations and empirical studies have validated the EWCS against external behavioral and organizational criteria:

• Superintendent Career Mobility: Fuqua (1983) utilized the EWCS to predict upward mobility and professional attractiveness among public school superintendents, demonstrating that individuals with elevated scores on Willingness to Seek Reward in Spite of Uncertainty and Competitiveness Desirability were significantly more likely to secure prestigious superintendencies and navigate complex school board politics.
• Administrative Job Satisfaction: Hatley (1991) identified substantial predictive relationships between the EWCS intrinsic motivation subscales (Personal Challenge) and high overall job satisfaction among Missouri high school principals and assistant principals, while finding that discrepancy between high surround concern and deficient district facilities predicted occupational alienation.
• Teacher Re-Entry and Retention: Dunton (1983) applied the EWCS to examine demographic profiles and work attitudes of new and re-entry teachers in Illinois, discovering that high Conservative Security preferences coupled with low Tolerance for Work Pressure predicted voluntary career attrition within the first three years of service.
• Departmental Climate: Simms (1981) demonstrated through participant observation and EWCS profiling in urban high schools that academic departments characterized by high shared scores on Personal Challenge and Development exhibited greater instructional innovation and collaborative peer interaction.

Reliability

The Educational Work Components Study exhibits robust internal consistency across diverse educator populations. In the initial psychometric validation by Miskel and Heller (1973) with a stratified sample of 745 educational professionals, Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficients were computed across all six extracted subscales.

The resulting internal consistency coefficients demonstrate that each subscale meets or exceeds standard psychometric criteria for organizational research instruments:

• Surround Concern: α = .83 (11 items)
• Willingness to Seek Reward in Spite of Uncertainty vs. Avoidance of Uncertainty: α = .82 (10 items)
• Conservative Security: α = .81 (11 items)
• Potential for Personal Challenge and Development: α = .80 (8 items)
• Tolerance for Work Pressure: α = .79 (9 items)
• Competitiveness Desirability and Reward of Success: α = .73 (7 items)

These values demonstrate solid psychometric parity with Borgatta’s (1968) original industrial WCS, where alpha coefficients ranged from .68 to .83. The EWCS subscales achieved a tighter, higher range (.73 to .83) when applied to educational personnel, confirming that contextualizing the items to public school settings improved measurement precision and reduced item-level error variance.

Subsequent investigations across independent educational cohorts have confirmed the structural stability and internal consistency of the EWCS, with alpha coefficients consistently replicating between .71 and .85 across diverse regional samples (e.g., Dunton, 1983; Hatley, 1991). Test-retest reliability across multi-week intervals has demonstrated stability coefficients above .75, indicating that the EWCS measures relatively stable motivational orientations and occupational value structures rather than transient emotional states.

Factor Analysis

The factorial validity of the EWCS was established through exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic approaches designed to test the dimensional stability of Borgatta’s original framework within educational settings (Miskel & Heller, 1973).

Factor Extraction and Rotation Procedures

The initial validation utilized an R-factor analytic model applied to the correlation matrix of the 56 items generated from the 745 educational respondents. To evaluate both orthogonal (independent) and oblique (correlated) latent relationships, the authors conducted:

• Varimax Orthogonal Rotation: To identify mutually exclusive, uncorrelated dimensions of educational work motivation, maximizing the variance of squared loadings across variables.
• Maxplane Oblique Rotation: To allow factors to correlate naturally, reflecting real-world interdependencies among organizational incentives and personal values.

The two rotational procedures yielded nearly identical factor structures, with item loadings demonstrating clean simple structure across the six primary factors. No significant cross-loadings (> .35) were observed across divergent conceptual domains, confirming the construct clarity of the adapted items.

Factor Loadings and Structural Breakdown

The 56 items are distributed across the six identified latent factors as follows:

• Factor 1: Potential for Personal Challenge and Development (8 items)
  Items: 13, 24, 31, 34, 39, 42, 45, and 56.
  Structural Focus: Creative opportunity, intellectual growth, originality, personal accomplishment, and professional education.
• Factor 2: Competitiveness Desirability and Reward of Success (7 items)
  Items: 3, 11, 21, 35, 37, 49, and 52.
  Structural Focus: Merit-based salary, open competition, production performance, bonuses, and accountability.
• Factor 3: Tolerance for Work Pressure (9 items)
  Items: 7, 12, 18, 22, 27, 28, 43, 48, and 50.
  Structural Focus: Heavy workloads, taking work home, on-call expectations, schedule flexibility, and institutional crises.
• Factor 4: Conservative Security (11 items)
  Items: 2, 10, 14, 15, 20, 26, 33, 36, 41, 47, and 54.
  Structural Focus: Job security, civil service protections, scheduled salary increments, routine tasks, and policy compliance.
• Factor 5: Willingness to Seek Reward in Spite of Uncertainty vs. Avoidance of Uncertainty (10 items)
  Items: 1, 4, 6, 9, 19, 25, 32, 40, 46, and 53.
  Structural Focus: High reward paired with job insecurity, organizational instability, risk of termination, and project impermanence.
• Factor 6: Surround Concern (11 items)
  Items: 5, 8, 16, 17, 23, 29, 30, 38, 44, 51, and 55.
  Structural Focus: Physical working conditions, modern ventilation, pleasant climate, fringe benefits, retirement security, and pleasant colleagues.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The technical specifications and administration parameters of the Educational Work Components Study are summarized below:

• Instrument Type: Multidimensional self-report work motivation and occupational values inventory.
• Target Population: Certified teachers, school building administrators (principals, assistant principals), central office personnel, superintendents, and pre-service educators.
• Item Format: 56 short declarative statements describing specific occupational conditions, job requirements, and organizational characteristics.
• Administration Method: Paper-and-pencil or self-administered digital questionnaire; individual or group testing formats.
• Estimated Completion Time: 15 to 25 minutes.
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert desirability scale evaluated against the introductory prompt: “How desirable would you consider each of the following items in a job for you? A job in which . . .”
  • 1 = Extremely Undesirable. Would never take the job
  • 2 = Undesirable. Would avoid the job
  • 3 = Neither Desirable or Undesirable
  • 4 = Desirable. Would favor the job
  • 5 = Extremely Desirable. Would favor job greatly
• Scoring and Computational Rules:
  • Items are grouped into six distinct subscales. No items are reverse-coded; each statement directly reflects the presence of the specified condition.
  • Subscale raw scores are computed by summing the numerical ratings (1–5) of the constituent items for each dimension.
  • Subscale mean scores (ranging from 1.00 to 5.00) can be calculated by dividing the subscale raw score sum by the number of items assigned to that factor:
  • Factor 1 (Challenge & Development): Sum of items (13, 24, 31, 34, 39, 42, 45, 56) / 8
  • Factor 2 (Competitiveness Desirability): Sum of items (3, 11, 21, 35, 37, 49, 52) / 7
  • Factor 3 (Tolerance for Work Pressure): Sum of items (7, 12, 18, 22, 27, 28, 43, 48, 50) / 9
  • Factor 4 (Conservative Security): Sum of items (2, 10, 14, 15, 20, 26, 33, 36, 41, 47, 54) / 11
  • Factor 5 (Willingness to Seek Reward / Uncertainty): Sum of items (1, 4, 6, 9, 19, 25, 32, 40, 46, 53) / 10
  • Factor 6 (Surround Concern): Sum of items (5, 8, 16, 17, 23, 29, 30, 38, 44, 51, 55) / 11
  • Scores can be analyzed as individual continuous subscale vectors or standardized into T-scores or percentiles for comparative organizational profiling.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Educational Work Components Study was formally published and validated in 1973 by Cecil G. Miskel and Leonard E. Heller in the Journal of Experimental Education. As an academic psychometric instrument developed through institutional university research and published in scholarly literature, the EWCS is widely accessible for academic research, doctoral dissertations, and educational evaluation purposes. No commercial fee is required for non-commercial educational research applications. Proper bibliographic citation of the original validation paper (Miskel & Heller, 1973) is required in all empirical presentations, academic reports, and resulting publications. Researchers seeking commercial utilization or electronic platform integration should consult standard copyright guidelines associated with the journal’s publication legacy.

References

• Bidwell, C. E. (1965). The school as a formal organization. In J. G. March (Ed.), Handbook of Organizations (pp. 972–1022). Rand McNally.
• Borgatta, E. F. (1967). The Work Components Study: A set of measures for work motivation. Technical Report, University of Wisconsin.
• Borgatta, E. F., Ford, R. N., & Bohrnstedt, G. W. (1968). The Work Components Study: A revised set of measures for work motivation. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 3(4), 403–414. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327906mbr0304_2
• Dunton, D. D. (1983). A study of demographic characteristics and stated attitudes towards work of new and re-entry teachers in selected Illinois districts [Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
• Fuqua, A. B. (1983). Professional attractiveness, inside sponsorship, and perceived paternalism as predictors of upward mobility of public school superintendents [Doctoral dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
• Hatley, P. R. (1991). Work motivation and job satisfaction of principals and assistant principals in Missouri public high schools [Doctoral dissertation, University of Missouri-Columbia]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
• Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snyderman, B. B. (1959). The Motivation to Work (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
• Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study. University of Chicago Press.
• Miskel, C. G., & Heller, L. E. (1973). The Educational Work Components Study: An adapted set of measures for work motivation. The Journal of Experimental Education, 42(1), 45–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973.1973.11011440
• Simms, M. W. (1981). A participant observation study of a large urban high school academic department: Profiling the staffs’ actions, motivation and climate perceptions [Doctoral dissertation, Boston University]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
• Vroom, V. H. (1964). Work and Motivation. John Wiley & Sons.

Items of the Scale