THE ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH INVENTORY (OHI-E)

 

Organizational Health Inventory for Elementary Schools (OHI-E)

A healthy school is one in which the institutional, administrative, and teacher levels are in harmony; and the school meets functional needs as it successfully copes with disruptive external forces and directs its energies toward its mission.

Dimensions (Subtests of the OHI-E)

Institutional Integrity describes a school that has integrity in its educational program. The school is not vulnerable to narrow, vested interests of community groups; indeed, teachers are protected from unreasonable community and parental demands. The school is able to cope successfully with destructive outside forces.

Collegial Leadership refers to behavior by the principal that is friendly, supportive, open, and guided by norms of equality. At the same time, however, the principal sets the tone for high performance by letting people know what is expected of them.

Resource Influence describes the principal’s ability to affect the action of superiors to the benefit of teachers. Teachers are given adequate classroom supplies, and extra instructional materials and supplies are easily obtained.

Teacher Affiliation refers to a sense of friendliness and strong affiliation with the school. Teachers feel good about each other and, at the same time, have a sense of accomplishment from their jobs. They are committed to both their students and their colleagues. They find ways to accommodate to the routine, accomplishing their jobs with enthusiasm.

Academic Emphasis refers to the school’s press for achievement. The expectation of high achievement is met by students who work hard, are cooperative, seek extra work, and respect other students who get good grades.

Reliability

Each of these dimensions was measured by a subtest of the OHI-E. The reliability scores for the scales were relatively high: Institutional Integrity (.90), Collegial Leadership (.95), Resource Influence (.89), Teacher Affiliation (.94), and Academic Emphais (.87).

Construct Validity

A factor analysis of several samples of the instrument supports the construct validity of the concept of organizational health (Hoy, Tarter, & Kottkamp, 1991; Hoy &Tarter, 1997). In addition, the predictive validity has been supported in other studies. See Hoy, Tarter, and Kottkamp (1991) for a review of that literature.

Administering the Instrument

The OHI-E is best administered as part of a faculty meeting. It is important to guarantee the anonymity of the teacher respondent; teachers are not asked to sign the questionnaire and no identifying code is placed on the form. Most teachers do not object to responding to the instrument, which takes less than ten minutes to complete. It is probably advisable to have someone other than the principal in charge of collecting the data. What is important is to create a non-threatening atmosphere where teachers give candid responses. All of the health and climate instruments follow the same pattern of administration.

Scoring

The items are scored by assigning 1 to “rarely occurs,” 2 to “sometimes occurs,” 3 to “often occurs,” and 4 to “very frequently occurs.” When an item is reversed scored, “rarely occurs” receives a 4, “sometimes occurs” a 3, and so on. Each item is scored for each respondent, and then an average school score for each item is computed by averaging the item responses across the school because the school is the unit of analysis.

Step 1: Score each item for each respondent with the appropriate number (1, 2, 3, or 4). Be sure to reverse score items 6, 8, 14, 19, 25, 29, 30, 37.

Step 2: Calculate an average school score for each item. If the school has 15 teachers, for example, one would add all 15 scores on each item and then divide by 15. Round the scores to the nearest hundredth. This score represents the average school item score. You should have 37 school item scores before proceeding.

Step 3: Sum the average school item scores as follows:

Institutional Integrity (II)=8+14+19+25+29+30
Collegial Leadership (CL)=1+3+4+10+11+15+17+21+26+34
Resource Influence (RI)=2+5+9+12+16+20+22
Teacher Affiliation (TA)=13+23+27+28+32+33+35+36+37
Academic Emphasis (AE)=6+7+18+24+31

These five scores represent the health profile of the school. You may wish to compare your school profile with other schools. To do this you will need to standardize each school score. The current data base on elementary schools is drawn from a large, diverse sample of schools in New Jersey. The average scores and standard deviations for each health dimension are summarized below:

	Mean (M)	Std. Deviation (SD)
Institutional Integrity (II)	16.06	2.77
Collegial Leadership (CL)	24.43	3.81
Resource Influence (RI)	20.18	2.48
Teacher Affiliation (TA)	26.32	2.98
Academic Emphasis (AE)	14.66	1.59

 

Computing Standardized Scores of the OHI-E

Convert the school subtest scores to standardized scores with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100, which we call SdS score.

First: Use the following formula:

SdS for II=100(II-16.06)/2.77+500

Compute the difference between your school score on II and the mean for the normative sample (II-16.06). Then multiply the difference by one hundred [100(II-16.06)]. Next divide the product by the standard deviation of the normative sample (2.77). Than add 500 to the result. You have computed a standardized score (SdS) for the institutional integrity subscale.

Next: Repeat the process for each dimension as follows:

SdS for CL=100(CL-24.43)/3.81+500
SdS for RI=100(RI-20.18)/2.48+500
SdS for TA=100(TA-26.32)/2.98+500
SdS for AE=100(AE-14.66)/1.59+500

You have standardized your school scores against the normative data provided in the New Jersey sample. For example, if your school score is 400 on institutional integrity, it is one standard deviation below the average score on institutional integrity of all schools in the sample; that is, the school has more institutional integrity than only 16% of the other schools. . You may recognize this system as the one used in reporting individual scores on the SAT, CEEB, and GRE. The range of these scores is presented below:

If the score is 200, it is lower than 99% of the schools.
If the score is 300, it is lower than 97% of the schools.
If the score is 400, it is lower than 84% of the schools.
If the score is 500, it is average.
If the score is 600, it is higher than 84% of the schools.
If the score is 700, it is higher than 97% of the schools.
If the score is 800, it is higher than 99% of the schools.

Health Index

An overall index of school health can be computed as follows:

HealthIndex(HI)=( (SdS for II)+(SdS for CL)+(SdS for RI)+(SdS for TA])+(SdS for AE) )/ 5

This health index is interpreted the same way as the subtest scores, that is, the mean of the “average” school is 500. Thus, a score of 650 on the health index represents a very healthy school just as a score of 350 depicts an unhealthy school climate. Most school scores, however, fall between these extremes and can only be diagnosed by carefully comparing all elements of the health inventory. We have changed the numbers into categories ranging from high to low by using the following conversion table:

Above 600 VERY HIGH
551-600 HIGH
525-550 ABOVE AVERAGE
511-524 SLIGHTLY ABOVE AVERAGE
490-510 AVERAGE
476-489 SLIGHTLY BELOW AVERAGE
450-475 BELOW AVERAGE
400-449 LOW
Below 400 VERY LOW

We recommend using all the dimensions of OHI-E to gain a finely tuned picture of school health.

Click here to download a copy of the OHI-E

For further information:

Hoy, W. K., Tarter, C. J., & Kottkamp, R. B. (1991). Open schools/healthy schools: Measuring organizational climate. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

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.