Examining Organizational Climate in Voluntary Child Welfare: Examining the Psychometric Properties of the Parker Psychological Climate Survey

Background and Purpose: Studies have identified organizational climate as contributing to workers’ job status, including workers’ decisions to leave; satisfaction with supervision and supervisor support; work load; salary, and organizational commitment (DePanfilis & Zlotnik, 2008). Positive organizational climates have been found to be associated with youth outcomes in child welfare and are a significant predictor of service quality (Glisson & Green, 2011). Positive organizational climate has been associated with organizations’ readiness to initiate innovations and successfully implement evidence-based practices (Claiborne et al., 2013).

Parker et al’s (2003) Psychological Climate Survey (PCS) operationalized individuals’ perceptions of their work environment.  This scale has been found to be both valid and reliable in a variety of human services (Parker et al., 2003); however, the psychometric properties of this instrument have not been examined with child welfare workers employed in private agencies, although it has been used in previous workforce research in this field  (Claiborne et al., 2011; Schudrich, 2013). 

The PCS has forty-eight items with four dimensions, each being comprised of three sub-sales. The dimensions include:  role, job, organization, and supervisor.

Methods:  The current research examines the validity of the PCS with a sample of voluntary child welfare workers employed in thirteen child welfare agencies under contract with the public child welfare system in one state. The agencies provide a wide-range of child welfare services and represent locations across the State. Workers in the sample represent direct care and clinical workers (n=580).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to examine the psychometric properties of each dimension of the PCS, based initially upon Parker et al’s (2003) a priori theoretical model. 

Results:  Strong models were developed for each dimension of the PCS.  The best-fitting model for the role dimension consisted of two constructs, overload and ambiguity (X²=21.78; df=8; p=0.01; RMSEA=0.06; CFI=0.99; TLI=0.98).  Factor loadings ranged from 0.61 to 0.92 and were all significant. The best-fitting model for the job dimension consisted of three constructs, importance, autonomy and challenge (X²=32.26; df=16; p=0.01; RMSEA=0.04; CFI=0.98; TLI=0.96).  Factor loadings ranged from 0.61 to 0.78 and were all significant.  The best-fitting model for the organization dimension consisted of two constructs, justice and support (X²=47.50; df=19; p=0.00; RMSEA=0.05; CFI=0.98; TLI=0.98).  Factor loadings ranged from 0.71 to 0.85 and were all significant. Finally, the best-fitting model for the supervisor dimension consisted of a single construct (X²=18.54; df=9; p=0.03; RMSEA=0.04; CFI=0.99; TLI=0.98).  Factor loadings ranged from 0.77 to 0.84 and were all significant. 

Conclusions and Implications:  Each dimension of the PCS defined by Parker et al (2003) consisted of twelve items.  Our validated models contained fewer observed variables.  The role dimension consisted of six variables; the job dimension consisted of eight; the organization dimension consisted of eight variables, and the supervisor dimension consisted of six.

Organizational climate plays an important role in workforce issues in child welfare settings.  This validated scale can be used in organizations wishing assess the climate of their agencies.  We recommend replicating this study with a sample of public child welfare workers.