The overall purposes of the Council of Colleges Arts and Sciences (CCAS) are to identify which areas in the academic culture and climate are sources of strength or weakness to the optimum functioning of the academic environment and/or to accurately measure changes across time. The current system of scales used by the CCAS consists of 24 items combined into 5 scales, 3 context items, and 8 open-ended items. The five scales are: communication, decision support, level of conflict, teamwork, and general work satisfaction. The higher scale scores correspond to more positive perceptions from the respondents. The three context items measured personal level of stress, perceived level of change in the BSU SoN, and rating of overall departmental morale, again with higher numbers indicating a more positive response. Three additional items recently have been added to measure the respondent's intent to leave their current position.
Assignment of items to scales was accomplished by logically grouping items based on their content and then confirming that each item contributed to the scale by studying the item-total correlation for each item and the Cronbach's alpha if the item was deleted. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was employed for the analysis. The final psychometric information and scale reliability for each scale are described below. The analysis is based on 1,168 responses. The final number included in each scale varies, however, since respondents need to answer all questions included in the analysis for the scale. Cronbach's alpha is used as the reliability measure. A summary of raw means, standard deviations, and reliability can be found in Table X.
The Communication Scale.
The CCAS communication scale consists of four (4) items where respondents are asked to rate overall effectiveness of communication within their nursing program, effectiveness of e-mail communications, effectiveness of voice mail and telephone communications, and effectiveness of face-to-face communications.
