The Measurement of Campus and Student Morale

Items for a morale scale were selected from Pace’s College and University Environment Scales. The initial morale scale of 55 items was reduced to 22 items without substantially changing the dimension being measured. The scale discriminates among the 100 colleges in Pace’s national sample, and its reliability is acceptable. The item- scale correlations , correlations between morale and the CUES scales, and comparisons of CUES and morale scores in terms of the ranges and means for each of Pace’s eight institutional types indicate, in general, satisfactory psychometric properties. An item factor analysis of the morale scale yielded five factors. Correlations with items from Astin’s research and from the NORC study support the validity of the scale.