Organizational Climate Description for Secondary Schools (OCDQ-RS)

1. Abstract

The Organizational Climate Description for Secondary Schools (OCDQ-RS) is a psychometrically validated, diagnostic survey instrument developed by Wayne K. Hoy, C. John Tarter, and Robert B. Kottkamp to assess the multidimensional social climate of secondary educational institutions. Serving as a domain-specific revision of the seminal Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire originally formulated by Andrew W. Halpin and Don B. Croft in 1963, the OCDQ-RS isolates the unique organizational dynamics, structural complexities, and interpersonal interactions characteristic of high schools and secondary learning environments. The instrument operationalizes organizational climate across two primary social domains—principal leadership behavior and teacher collegial interactions—comprising five distinct subscales: Supportive Behavior, Directive Behavior, Engaged Behavior, Frustrated Behavior, and Intimate Behavior. Structured as a 34-item self-report inventory utilizing a four-point Likert-type frequency metric ranging from 1 (“rarely occurs”) to 4 (“very frequently occurs”), the OCDQ-RS yields discrete subscale scores as well as standardized normative profiles (mean = 500, standard deviation = 100) that delineate secondary school climates along a continuum anchored by “Open” and “Closed” organizational typologies.

Empirical evaluations consistently document robust psychometric credentials for the OCDQ-RS. Internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) across the five dimensions consistently meet or exceed rigorous measurement thresholds: Supportive Behavior (α = .91), Directive Behavior (α = .87), Engaged Behavior (α = .85), Frustrated Behavior (α = .85), and Intimate Behavior (α = .71). Construct validity is sustained through systematic exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses demonstrating stable orthogonal and oblique configurations across diverse secondary school cohorts. Furthermore, the OCDQ-RS displays well-documented criterion-related, convergent, and discriminant validity, exhibiting substantial correlations with teacher sense of efficacy, institutional trust, faculty commitment, student academic achievement, and organizational health. This article provides an exhaustive examination of the OCDQ-RS, delineating its historical emergence, theoretical underpinnings, structural facets, scoring protocols, psychometric validation trajectories, and administrative utilities within educational research and organizational development.

2. Keywords

OCDQ-RS, Organizational Climate Description for Secondary Schools, school organizational climate, educational leadership, principal supportive behavior, principal directive behavior, teacher engagement, faculty frustration, school administration assessment, psychometrics

3. Authors

The Organizational Climate Description for Secondary Schools (OCDQ-RS) was conceptualized, developed, and empirically validated by three distinguished scholars in the fields of educational administration, organizational theory, and psychometrics:

• Wayne K. Hoy, Ed.D.: The Fawcett Professor Emeritus of Educational Administration in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University. Dr. Hoy is an internationally acclaimed educational researcher renowned for his foundational theoretical and empirical models on school organizational climate, academic optimism, institutional trust, and school health. Prior to his tenure at Ohio State, he served as a distinguished professor at Rutgers University.
• C. John Tarter, Ed.D.: Professor Emeritus of Educational Administration at St. John’s University and formerly Professor at Rutgers University. Dr. Tarter’s scholarship centers extensively on organizational decision-making, educational leadership dynamics, shared governance, and organizational trust within public school environments.
• Robert B. Kottkamp, Ph.D.: Professor Emeritus of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the School of Education at Hofstra University. Dr. Kottkamp has contributed extensively to the literature on reflective practice for school leaders, supervisory models, and organizational climate diagnosis across K-12 learning systems.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Organizational Climate Description for Secondary Schools (OCDQ-RS) is to provide a theoretically grounded, reliable, and diagnostically potent measurement tool designed explicitly to quantify, interpret, and differentiate the interpersonal climate within secondary schools. When Halpin and Croft formulated the original 64-item OCDQ in 1963, their validation sample was comprised almost exclusively of elementary schools. While their classic taxonomy—spanning eight dimensions and arraying schools across six climate archetypes from Open to Closed—revolutionized educational research, subsequent attempts to apply the original OCDQ to comprehensive secondary schools encountered substantial empirical and conceptual anomalies. High schools are inherently distinct organizational entities characterized by pronounced departmentalization, subject-matter specialization, complex administrative hierarchies, distinct adolescent socialization patterns, larger faculty sizes, and elevated professional autonomy. Consequently, items that captured administrative transparency or social isolation in elementary units frequently misclassified or obscured the operational realities of secondary settings.

To redress these deficiencies, Hoy, Tarter, and Kottkamp embarked on a systematic research agenda to construct a revised, secondary-specific instrument that retained the parsimonious conceptual elegance of the open-closed framework while capturing the structural and ecological realities of secondary schools. The OCDQ-RS measures how secondary teachers perceive the formal leadership style of their chief executive (the principal) and the professional and social interactions of their colleagues (the faculty). By conceptualizing school climate as a collective, school-level property, the instrument serves both research and practical diagnostic purposes:

• Academic Research Applications: In quantitative educational research, the OCDQ-RS provides standardized metrics to investigate climate as an independent, mediating, or dependent variable. Scholars employ the tool to analyze how principal leadership paradigms relate to teacher retention, burn-out, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB), institutional accountability, student achievement metrics, and school-community relational dynamics.
• Administrative and Organizational Diagnosis: For district superintendents, secondary principals, and organizational development consultants, the instrument provides an empirical diagnostic snapshot. Rather than relying on subjective intuition or anecdotal impressions, school leaders can objectively identify faculty frustration, autocratic leadership overreach, isolation, or high professional engagement. The OCDQ-RS yields actionable feedback for strategic planning, professional development initiatives, and systemic organizational restructuring.
• Theoretical Refinement: The OCDQ-RS bridges the gap between classic industrial-organizational sociology and educational leadership. It provides empirical verification for open systems theory, illustrating how bureaucratic constraints and human-relations dimensions interact within professional service bureaucracies.

5. Psychological Construct

Organizational climate represents the relatively enduring quality of the internal school environment that is experienced by participants, influences their collective behavior, and can be described in terms of the values of a particular set of characteristics or attributes of the school (Hoy & Miskel, 2013). Rather than assessing individual personality traits, affective states, or fleeting psychological moods, the OCDQ-RS measures the shared psychological perceptions of social actors within an organizational collective. The construct assumes that climate emerges through social interaction, communicative exchanges, and mutual interpretation of workplace policies, administrative actions, and collegial behaviors.

The OCDQ-RS operationalizes this multifaceted construct across two primary interactional arenas—principal leadership behavior and teacher-teacher interactions—encapsulated within five empirically derived dimensions:

Principal Leadership Behavior Dimensions

The principal’s behavior directly sets the administrative tone, establishes expectations for compliance, and either buffers or exacerbates faculty stressors. The OCDQ-RS categorizes leadership behavior into two distinct, non-overlapping styles:

• Supportive Behavior (7 items): Refers to an open, human-centered, and goal-directed administrative posture. The supportive principal genuinely listens to teacher ideas, values professional contributions, offers constructive praise, and provides both professional and personal assistance. Rather than managing through criticism, the supportive principal leads by personal example, works diligently, explains the rationale behind institutional critiques, and respects the autonomy of professional educators. Exemplar indicators include setting a hard-working example, going out of one’s way to assist staff, and demonstrating genuine concern for the personal welfare of the faculty.
• Directive Behavior (7 items): Characterizes a rigid, autocratic, and task-obsessed supervisory style. The directive principal oversees faculty activities with relentless, highly intrusive scrutiny. Administrative interactions are dominated by unidirectional communication; the principal monitors minutiae, demands immediate compliance, rules with an “iron fist,” and fails to incorporate faculty voice into organizational decisions. In high-directive schools, teacher-principal conferences are monologues where the administrator talks rather than listens, effectively undermining professional autonomy through close supervision.

Teacher Interaction Behavior Dimensions

Teacher behavior delineates the peer culture, professional commitment, collaborative spirit, and social networks that exist among the instructional staff. Three distinct dimensions characterize secondary faculty dynamics:

• Engaged Behavior (10 items): Reflects a high level of professional investment, collegial collaboration, and pedagogical pride. Teachers exhibiting engaged behavior demonstrate exemplary professional commitment: they assist students beyond designated classroom hours, maintain warm and friendly relations with learners, respect the instructional competence of their peers, and willingly support colleagues. In engaged faculties, morale is elevated, students are trusted to solve problems through logical reasoning, and teachers express genuine pride in the institution.
• Frustrated Behavior (6 items): Depicts a pervasive sense of organizational alienation, administrative encumbrance, and interpersonal friction. In frustrated environments, teachers feel overwhelmed by extraneous routine duties, excessive paperwork, and burdensome committee assignments that actively impede the primary task of classroom instruction. Collegial relationships are characterized by tension, annoyance with colleagues’ mannerisms, and disruptive behaviors such as interrupting peers during faculty meetings.
• Intimate Behavior (4 items): Captures strong, close-knit, and cohesive social relationships among the faculty. This dimension measures informal, non-work-related peer affiliations. In schools high on intimate behavior, teachers form meaningful personal friendships: they socialize regularly outside the professional environment, know the family backgrounds of colleagues, invite each other to their homes, and identify other faculty members as their closest personal confidants.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the OCDQ-RS synthesizes several foundational paradigms from sociology, organizational psychology, and administrative theory, notably General Systems Theory, Contingency Theory, and the classic social systems models formulated by Talcott Parsons, Jacob Getzels, and Egon Guba.

Getzels-Guba Social Systems Model

The structural genesis of the OCDQ-RS is intimately linked to the Getzels and Guba (1957) model of educational administration. Getzels and Guba conceptualized schools as social systems characterized by two concurrent, interacting dimensions: the nomothetic (institutional) dimension and the idiographic (personal) dimension. The nomothetic axis encompasses formal roles, structural expectations, institutional mandates, and administrative goals designed to achieve organizational ends. Conversely, the idiographic axis represents the individual personalities, unique needs, values, and interpersonal dispositions of the organizational participants. Effective and healthy school functionality requires continuous dynamic equilibrium between nomothetic compliance and idiographic fulfillment. The OCDQ-RS directly captures this dynamic: Directive Behavior and Frustrated Behavior mirror an overbearing or pathological nomothetic dominance, whereas Supportive Behavior, Engaged Behavior, and Intimate Behavior represent the harmonious integration of personal needs with professional institutional objectives.

Halpin and Croft’s Open-Closed Conceptual Continuum

The intellectual precursor to the OCDQ-RS is Halpin and Croft’s (1963) construct of organizational openness. In their classic formulation, “openness” designated an institutional environment marked by authenticity, transparency, high task satisfaction, and low role conflict. Hoy, Tarter, and Kottkamp refined this continuum to fit the differentiated structure of secondary organizations. In the OCDQ-RS framework, the interaction of principal behaviors (Supportive vs. Directive) and faculty behaviors (Engaged vs. Frustrated) dictates a school’s location along the openness continuum:

• Open Climate: Characterized by high principal Supportiveness, low principal Directiveness, high faculty Engagement, low faculty Frustration, and moderate Intimacy. The principal leads through facilitation, empathy, and professional trust; teachers respond with high collegial solidarity, pride in their work, and dedication to student academic success.
• Closed Climate: The polar antithesis of the open school. The closed climate features low Supportiveness, high Directiveness, low Engagement, high Frustration, and either negligible or excessively fractured Intimacy. The principal operates autocratically, burying staff under intrusive monitoring and red tape; teachers exhibit apathy, alienation, minimal professional collaboration, and high interpersonal tension.
• Engaged Climate: A hybrid profile marked by low principal Supportiveness and high Directiveness, yet paradoxically paired with high faculty Engagement, low Frustration, and moderate to high Intimacy. In this environment, the faculty overcomes ineffective or overbearing leadership by rallying together, relying on collegial solidarity and peer competence to sustain instructional excellence.
• Disengaged Climate: The inverse hybrid condition. The principal is highly supportive, approachable, and non-directive, but the faculty remains alienated, frustrated, uncommitted, and uncooperative. Despite administrative efforts to foster an open environment, teacher peer culture remains indifferent or resistant.

7. Validity

The psychometric integrity of the OCDQ-RS is supported by extensive empirical validation studies conducted across diverse secondary school systems in the United States and internationally.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity was initially established through comprehensive iterative factor analyses during the instrument’s developmental validation phase (Hoy, Tarter, & Kottkamp, 1991). Drawing from extensive sample pools of secondary teachers and high schools, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique rotations demonstrated that the 34 items consistently loaded on their designated five latent constructs without significant cross-loadings. Principal behaviors (Supportive and Directive) loaded onto two independent factors, verifying that an administrator’s supportive conduct does not merely represent the absence of direction, but rather a distinct operational construct. Similarly, teacher behaviors segregated cleanly into Engaged, Frustrated, and Intimate dimensions, affirming that professional engagement and interpersonal frustration constitute distinct affective-behavioral realms rather than direct linear opposites.

Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity

Extensive empirical investigations have evaluated the criterion-related validity of the OCDQ-RS by correlating its subscales with independent measures of organizational behavior, staff attitudes, and educational outcomes:

• Institutional Trust: Construct validation studies demonstrate that secondary schools with high Supportive Behavior and high Engaged Behavior exhibit significantly higher levels of omnibus faculty trust in the principal and trust in colleagues, as measured by Hoy and Tschannen-Moran’s Omnibus T-Scale.
• Teacher Sense of Efficacy: Significant positive correlations exist between faculty Engaged Behavior and collective teacher efficacy. In secondary schools where teachers perceive high collegial respect and mutual support, their collective belief in their capacity to promote student learning is substantially amplified.
• Student Academic Performance: Studies controlling for socioeconomic status (SES) reveal that secondary school Openness (derived from high supportive and engaged scores paired with low directive and frustrated scores) significantly predicts student standardized achievement indices in reading, mathematics, and science.
• Organizational Health: Validation studies pairing the OCDQ-RS with the Organizational Health Inventory for Secondary Schools (OHI-S) confirm strong convergent associations; open climates correlate positively with academic emphasis, institutional integrity, and resource support.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been corroborated by demonstrating that OCDQ-RS subscale scores do not correlate significantly with demographic variables that are theoretically unrelated to organizational climate, such as school geographical location (urban vs. rural) when structural resources are held constant, or individual teacher age and gender distributions within faculties.

8. Reliability

The OCDQ-RS demonstrates high levels of internal consistency and temporal stability across a broad spectrum of educational environments. The scale was subjected to rigorous psychometric scrutiny during normative sampling, yielding exceptional Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients for all five operationalized subscales:

• Supportive Behavior (7 items): Cronbach’s α = .91
• Directive Behavior (7 items): Cronbach’s α = .87
• Engaged Behavior (10 items): Cronbach’s α = .85
• Frustrated Behavior (6 items): Cronbach’s α = .85
• Intimate Behavior (4 items): Cronbach’s α = .71

With four of the five subscales exceeding the .85 threshold, the instrument demonstrates exemplary internal consistency for institutional assessment tools. While the Intimate Behavior subscale exhibits a comparatively lower coefficient (α = .71), this is psychometrically expected due to its brief 4-item span; it nonetheless remains well above the conventional .70 threshold for research and diagnostic utility.

Because the OCDQ-RS is designed to measure organizational-level constructs, researchers have also scrutinized its reliability via multi-level modeling techniques, including Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC-1 and ICC-2). ICC-1 values across the dimensions consistently demonstrate that a significant proportion of variance in individual teacher responses is accounted for by school membership. Furthermore, ICC-2 estimates (measuring the reliability of school mean scores) routinely exceed .80, justifying the aggregation of individual teacher responses to the school organizational level.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural development of the OCDQ-RS involved a multi-stage factor analytic strategy designed to refine item selection, eliminate structural ambiguity, and confirm latent dimensionality. Hoy, Tarter, and Kottkamp began with an extensive pool of candidate items drawn from the original Halpin and Croft inventory, combined with newly formulated items reflecting modern secondary school organization.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During the developmental phase, the instrument was administered to faculties across diverse secondary schools. Principal components analysis followed by Varimax rotation yielded a stable, five-factor orthogonal structure explaining substantial cumulative variance (typically greater than 55% across independent samples). Two critical criteria were maintained for final item retention: an item had to achieve a primary factor loading of .40 or greater on its targeted construct, and it could not demonstrate a cross-loading exceeding .30 on any alternative factor. The final 34 items segregated cleanly across two separate structural domains:

• Factor 1: Supportive Principal Behavior (Items 5, 6, 23, 24, 25, 29, 30): Factor loadings ranged from .58 to .83. Items captured administrative fairness, assistance, personal example, and constructive communication.
• Factor 2: Directive Principal Behavior (Items 7, 12, 13, 18, 19, 31, 32): Factor loadings ranged from .54 to .79. Items captured close supervision, autocratic control, and dominant communicative postures.
• Factor 3: Engaged Teacher Behavior (Items 3, 4, 10, 11, 16, 17, 20, 28, 33, 34): Factor loadings ranged from .48 to .76. Items loaded on professional dedication, peer competence, high morale, and student-centered orientation.
• Factor 4: Frustrated Teacher Behavior (Items 1, 2, 8, 9, 15, 22): Factor loadings ranged from .50 to .75. Items captured administrative interference, burdensome paperwork, excessive duties, and collegial bickering.
• Factor 5: Intimate Teacher Behavior (Items 14, 21, 26, 27): Factor loadings ranged from .55 to .78. Items loaded specifically onto informal, non-work social relationships among faculty.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Subsequent confirmatory factor analytic studies evaluating the five-factor model have confirmed strong goodness-of-fit indices. Across multiple secondary school samples, structural equation models evaluating the five-factor specification consistently report Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) values below .06, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) values exceeding .92, and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) values below .05. These results robustly confirm that the five-factor structural architecture of the OCDQ-RS provides an empirically valid representation of secondary school climate.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Organizational Climate Description for Secondary Schools (OCDQ-RS)
• Target Population: Secondary school educators (high school, comprehensive secondary, and senior secondary faculty members)
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil self-administered questionnaire or secure online survey format
• Item Count: 34 items
• Administration Duration: Approximately 7 to 12 minutes
• Response Metric: 4-point Likert-type frequency scale:
  • 1 = Rarely Occurs
  • 2 = Sometimes Occurs
  • 3 = Often Occurs
  • 4 = Very Frequently Occurs
• Subscale Item Composition:
  • Supportive Behavior (S): 7 items (Items 5, 6, 23, 24, 25, 29, 30)
  • Directive Behavior (D): 7 items (Items 7, 12, 13, 18, 19, 31, 32)
  • Engaged Behavior (E): 10 items (Items 3, 4, 10, 11, 16, 17, 20, 28, 33, 34)
  • Frustrated Behavior (F): 6 items (Items 1, 2, 8, 9, 15, 22)
  • Intimate Behavior (Int): 4 items (Items 14, 21, 26, 27)
• Scoring and Aggregation Procedures:
  1. Individual Scoring: Items are scored from 1 to 4. None of the 34 items require reverse scoring; all items are coded in the direct positive direction of their designated subscale name.
  2. School Mean Calculation: Because climate is an organizational property, individual teacher scores for each item are summed and averaged across the entire participating faculty to produce a single school-level item mean.
  3. Subscale Score Generation: Subscale raw scores are computed by summing the corresponding school-level item means within each dimension:
     • Supportive Score = Sum(Means of items 5, 6, 23, 24, 25, 29, 30)
     • Directive Score = Sum(Means of items 7, 12, 13, 18, 19, 31, 32)
     • Engaged Score = Sum(Means of items 3, 4, 10, 11, 16, 17, 20, 28, 33, 34)
     • Frustrated Score = Sum(Means of items 1, 2, 8, 9, 15, 22)
     • Intimate Score = Sum(Means of items 14, 21, 26, 27)
  4. Standardization (Normative SMR Conversion): Raw subscale scores are converted into standardized scores (Standardized Metric Representation, SMR) with a normative mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100 using the formula:
     Standardized Score = 100 * (School Subscale Raw Score - Normative Mean) / Normative SD + 500
     This conversion facilitates direct cross-school benchmarking and the generation of standardized organizational profiles.
  5. Climate Profile Interpretation: Standard scores above 500 reflect climate dimensions operating above the normative secondary school average, while scores below 500 represent dimensions operating below normative baselines. Composite Openness indexes can be calculated by contrasting positive dimensions (Supportive, Engaged) against restrictive dimensions (Directive, Frustrated).

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Organizational Climate Description for Secondary Schools (OCDQ-RS) was formally published in 1991 in the foundational research volume Open Schools/Healthy Schools: Measuring Organizational Climate by Wayne K. Hoy, C. John Tarter, and Robert B. Kottkamp (Sage Publications).

Licensing and Research Availability: The OCDQ-RS is considered an open-access, non-commercial research instrument for academic, educational, and non-profit diagnostic purposes. The primary author, Dr. Wayne K. Hoy, has dedicated the instrument to the public educational research domain. Researchers, doctoral candidates, school administrators, and educational specialists may reproduce, administer, and analyze the OCDQ-RS without purchasing costly per-administration user licenses or paying royalty fees, provided proper scholarly citation and copyright attribution are maintained in all resulting manuscripts, dissertations, and institutional reports.

Official diagnostic scoring manuals, psychometric guides, normative conversion tables, and PDF copies of the instrument are maintained freely for educational scholarship at Wayne K. Hoy’s official academic repository: www.waynekhoy.com.

12. References

• Getzels, J. W., & Guba, E. G. (1957). Social behavior and the administrative process. The School Review, 65(4), 423–441. https://doi.org/10.1086/442411
• Halpin, A. W., & Croft, D. B. (1963). The organizational climate of schools. Chicago, IL: Midwest Administration Center, The University of Chicago.
• Hoy, W. K., & Miskel, C. G. (2013). Educational administration: Theory, research, and practice (9th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
• Hoy, W. K., & Tarter, C. J. (1997). The road to open and healthy schools: A handbook for change, Elementary Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
• Hoy, W. K., Tarter, C. J., & Kottkamp, R. B. (1991). Open schools/healthy schools: Measuring organizational climate. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
• Hoy, W. K., & Tschannen-Moran, M. (1999). Five faces of trust: An empirical confirmation in urban elementary schools. Journal of School Leadership, 9(3), 184–208. https://doi.org/10.1177/105268469900900301
• Kottkamp, R. B., Mulhern, J. A., & Hoy, W. K. (1987). Secondary school climate: A revision of the OCDQ. Educational Administration Quarterly, 23(3), 31–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X87023003003
• Tarter, C. J., Bliss, J. R., & Hoy, W. K. (1989). School characteristics and faculty trust in secondary schools. Educational Administration Quarterly, 25(3), 294–308. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X89025003005

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)