The Student Trust Scales
Student Trust
Thus, vulnerability, benevolence, reliability, competence, honesty, and openness characterize the measures of student trust. There are two student trust scales: Student Trust in Principal (STP-Scale) and Student Trust in Faculty (STF-Scale), which were developed by Curt Adams (Curt.Adams-1@ou.edu) and Patrick Forsyth (patrick.forsyth@ou.edu) of The University of Oklahoma.
Student Trust in Principal-(STP-Scale)
The STP-Scale is a 12-item Likert questionnaire that measures students’ trust in the principal. The scale is administered to students in the school and scored along a 4-point scale from 1(strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree): The higher the score, the greater the trust in the principal.
Student Trust in Faculty-(STF-Scale)
The STF-Scale is a 13-item Likert questionnaire that measures students’ trust in the principal. The scale is administered to students in the school and scored along a 4-point scale from 1(strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree): The higher the score, the greater the trust in the faculty.
Reliability and Validity of the Student Trust Scales
Reliability, as measured by Cronbach’s alpha, was .95 for the STP-Scale and .90 for the STF-Scale, suggesting strong internal consistency among the items for both scales. The structure of the factor analysis supported the construct validity, as did concurrent and predictive validity procedures for both scales (Forsyth, Adams, & Hoy, in press).
Scoring Key
All items are scored from 1 to 4 except for item 10, which is scored in reverse [1=4, 2=3, 3=2, and 4=1]. Then scores for all items are summed for the total score for each student, and then the student scores are averaged for a school score.
