Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire

Abstract

The Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire (PTO), developed by Ralph R. Bentley and Averno M. Rempel in 1970 through the Purdue Research Foundation at Purdue University, represents one of the most historically significant, extensively validated, and frequently cited psychometric instruments designed to evaluate job satisfaction and morale among primary and secondary educators. Comprising exactly 100 Likert-type items, the PTO yields both a comprehensive global morale score and 10 discrete subscale scores: Teacher Rapport with Principal (20 items), Satisfaction with Teaching (20 items), Rapport Among Teachers (14 items), Teacher Salary (7 items), Teacher Load (11 items), Curriculum Issues (5 items), Teacher Status (8 items), Community Support of Education (5 items), School Facilities and Services (5 items), and Community Pressures (5 items). A specialized PTO Supplement extends this diagnostic profile by assessing teacher rapport with the school board (10 items) and superintendent (10 items).

Standardized on an initial stratified normative sample of 3,023 educators across 76 public high schools in Indiana and eastern Oregon, the instrument exhibits robust psychometric properties. Internal consistency estimates utilizing the Kuder-Richardson formulation and Cronbach’s alpha range from 0.79 to 0.98 across the subscales, culminating in an overall total instrument reliability coefficient of 0.96. Test-retest stability coefficients over extended intervals range from 0.62 to 0.88, demonstrating marked temporal consistency. Factorial validity was empirically confirmed via principal components analysis with oblique rotation, establishing an articulated multidimensional construct that isolates interpersonal dynamics, administrative climate, operational workload, and socioeconomic status. The PTO serves educational researchers, school psychologists, and academic administrators in diagnosing organizational climate, assessing institutional interventions, and examining systemic predictors of educator burnout and retention.

Keywords

Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire, teacher morale, educational climate, job satisfaction, school organizational psychology, teacher-principal rapport, instructional workload, educational administration, psychometrics, faculty cohesion, school psychology, teacher attrition

Authors

The Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire was conceptualized, psychometrically developed, and standardized by Ralph R. Bentley, Ph.D., and Averno M. Rempel, Ph.D., distinguished faculty researchers in the Department of Education within the School of Humanities, Social Science, and Education at Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana). Both scholars specialized in educational administration, psychometric measurement, vocational agriculture education, and organizational behavior within primary and secondary school ecosystems.

Initial developmental investigations and psychometric standardization protocols were sponsored and officially copyrighted under the auspices of the Purdue Research Foundation. The authors dedicated over a decade of empirical research—beginning in the early 1960s with foundational instruments such as the Purdue Teacher Morale Inventory—culminating in the definitive 100-item commercial publication and accompanying diagnostic manual in 1970.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire is to provide an objective, standardized, and empirically grounded assessment of teacher morale, conceptualized as a multidimensional affective state reflecting professional enthusiasm, institutional loyalty, interpersonal harmony, and systemic job satisfaction. Prior to the formal operationalization of the PTO, investigations into educational workplace dynamics suffered from fragmented conceptualizations of teacher attitudes, frequently relying on univariate indices that failed to delineate between micro-level classroom experiences, administrative interactions, and macro-level community pressures.

Bentley and Rempel designed the PTO to fulfill dual functions within contemporary psychometrics and applied educational leadership:

• Diagnostic Institutional Evaluation: To afford school principals, district superintendents, and boards of education an accurate diagnostic tool capable of identifying institutional friction points. The instrument assesses whether organizational dysfunction stems from supervisory communication deficits, peer-group factionalism, inadequate instructional supplies, or unrealistic community standards.
• Empirical Research Application: To furnish educational researchers with a psychometrically sound, highly reliable instrument to investigate the complex relationships between organizational climate, leadership styles (e.g., transformational versus transactional leadership), faculty mental health, pedagogical efficacy, and student academic achievement.
• Intervention Monitoring and Formative Evaluation: To provide longitudinal baseline data for school districts implementing organizational changes, curriculum redesigns, novel salary schedules, or decentralization models such as site-based shared decision-making. By administering the PTO pre- and post-intervention, administrators quantify changes across individual morale dimensions rather than relying on ambiguous aggregate impressions.
• Mitigation of Faculty Attrition: To systematically isolate early predictors of occupational stress, burnout, and voluntary resignation. The subscales differentiate between dissatisfaction driven by external remuneration (hygiene factors) and intrinsic classroom disengagement (motivator factors), enabling targeted administrative remediation.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire is teacher morale, operationalized as the comprehensive composite of professional attitudes, affective orientations, and behavioral dispositions held by educators toward their occupational environment, administrative leaders, colleagues, and the wider educational community. Rather than treating morale as an undifferentiated, global continuum, the PTO operationalizes it across ten distinct, empirically validated dimensions:

1. Teacher Rapport with Principal (Items: 20)

This subscale evaluates the educator’s subjective perception of the school principal’s professional competence, human relations acumen, communicative openness, and fairness. It captures whether leadership is experienced as encouraging and supportive or punitive and authoritarian. Key operational indicators include impartiality, freedom to critique administrative policies during faculty meetings, validation of professional achievements, and constructive supervisory practices that avoid invasive micromanagement (termed “snoopervising” in the vernacular of the instrument). Representative items include: “The work of individual faculty members is appreciated and commended by our principal” and “My school principal supervises rather than ‘snoopervises’ the teachers in our school.”

2. Satisfaction with Teaching (Items: 20)

Focusing on intrinsic vocational motivation, this dimension explores the deep-seated professional satisfaction derived directly from pedagogy and daily classroom interactions with students. It taps into vocational commitment, professional self-efficacy, joy in instruction, and pride in educational outcomes. Crucially, it balances affective enthusiasm against emotional exhaustion, assessing whether teachers would re-enter the profession if granted the choice. Representative items include: “I love to teach” and “I find my contacts with students, for the most part, highly satisfying and rewarding.”

3. Rapport Among Teachers (Items: 14)

This subscale assesses horizontal interpersonal dynamics, peer cohesion, and collaborative workplace norms among the instructional faculty. It identifies the presence or absence of destructive workplace behaviors, such as backbiting, factionalism, and insular cliques, while measuring collaborative synergy, mutual respect, professional ethics, and social integration between novice and veteran faculty. Representative items include: “The teachers in our school cooperate with each other to achieve common, personal, and professional objectives” and “There is a great deal of griping, arguing, taking sides, and feuding among our teachers.”

4. Teacher Salary (Items: 7)

Evaluating economic satisfaction and perceived equity, this dimension assesses how teachers perceive the fairness, transparency, and adequacy of their financial compensation. Rather than merely probing absolute income levels, it targets institutional justice: whether salary increments are administered objectively, whether pay reflects professional competence, and how local district schedules compare with neighboring school divisions. Representative items include: “Salary policies are administered with fairness and justice” and “The salary schedule in our school adequately recognizes teacher competency.”

5. Teacher Load (Items: 11)

This component captures the operational pressures associated with daily professional responsibilities, clerical demands, instructional schedules, class sizes, and non-instructional obligations. It assesses the encroachment of bureaucratic administrative burdens (“red tape”), extracurricular supervisory expectations, and excessive record-keeping on instructional time and personal life. Representative items include: “Details, ‘red tape,’ and required reports absorb too much of my time” and “My heavy teaching load unduly restricts my nonprofessional activities.”

6. Curriculum Issues (Items: 5)

Reflecting pedagogical alignment and institutional efficacy, this subscale gauges the faculty’s assessment of the school’s educational program. It examines whether the curriculum is perceived as balanced, capable of accommodating individual student differences, and effectively oriented toward preparing learners for civic competence. Dysfunctional, outdated, or rigid curricular frameworks induce professional alienation, which this dimension reliably detects. Representative items include: “Our school has a well-balanced curriculum” and “The curriculum of our school makes reasonable provision for student individual differences.”

7. Teacher Status (Items: 8)

This construct examines the social and socioeconomic prestige educators derive from their professional roles within the broader municipality. It measures whether teachers feel socially valued, whether their positions afford them personal and financial security, and whether their vocation enables an acceptable standard of living and social respect. Representative items include: “My teaching position gives me the social status in the community that I desire” and “This community respects its teachers and treats them like professional persons.”

8. Community Support of Education (Items: 5)

This dimension measures the extent to which the local community is perceived as valuing, understanding, and actively underwriting quality public education. It assesses community investment, constructive participation, and ethical support for school policies and professional appointments, providing an index of the macro-environmental support surrounding the school. Representative items include: “Most of the people in this community understand and appreciate good education” and “This community is willing to support a good program of education.”

9. School Facilities and Services (Items: 5)

Focusing on the physical and logistical infrastructure of the school, this subscale evaluates the adequacy of educational equipment, audiovisual technology, classroom supplies, library holdings, and specialized clerical support services. It also appraises the bureaucratic efficiency of procurement protocols. Representative items include: “My school provides me with adequate classroom supplies and equipment” and “The procedures for obtaining materials and services are well defined and efficient.”

10. Community Pressures (Items: 5)

This subscale quantifies the degree of social surveillance, normative control, and moralistic intrusion imposed upon teachers by their surrounding community. It evaluates community expectations regarding teachers’ personal conduct, participation in external civic and religious functions, and intellectual freedom to address controversial socioeconomic and political topics in the classroom. Representative items include: “This community expects its teachers to meet unreasonable personal standards” and “Teachers in our community feel free to discuss controversial issues in their classes.”

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire is anchored in foundational mid-twentieth-century organizational psychology, human relations theory, and motivation paradigms. Chief among these is Frederick Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene Theory (Two-Factor Theory). Herzberg posited that workplace satisfaction and workplace dissatisfaction do not exist along a single bipolar continuum; rather, they are driven by two distinct sets of conditions. Motivator factors (intrinsic aspects such as achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, and advancement) generate positive job satisfaction, whereas hygiene factors (extrinsic elements such as administrative policy, supervision, salary, interpersonal relations, and physical working conditions) prevent severe job dissatisfaction.

Bentley and Rempel systematically integrated Herzberg’s dual-factor paradigm into educational settings. Within the PTO, the intrinsic subscales—specifically Satisfaction with Teaching and Curriculum Issues—mirror Herzbergian motivators by examining the core pedagogical craft, self-actualization, and vocational mastery. Conversely, the extrinsic dimensions—such as Teacher Salary, School Facilities and Services, Teacher Load, and Teacher Rapport with Principal—represent quintessential hygiene variables. If school leadership fails to maintain equitable hygiene factors, morale plummets; however, resolving hygiene deficits alone is insufficient to instill high vocational passion without concurrent intrinsic motivators.

The PTO is likewise informed by Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, progressing from foundational material security (adequate salary, safe physical facilities, manageable workload) through social and belongingness needs (rapport among colleagues, positive relational climate with administrative supervisors) to self-esteem and self-actualization (status in the community, autonomy in the classroom, professional efficacy). In school environments where lower-level physiological and safety concerns are continually challenged by unmanageable clerical demands or financial instability, teachers cannot effectively channel their energies into student mentorship and pedagogical innovation.

Furthermore, the instrument incorporates sociological models of Role Theory and Social Exchange Theory. Teachers operate within a web of conflicting role expectations held by principals, peers, parents, and community patrons. When community pressures mandate rigid conformity while professional associations urge critical academic discourse, educators experience profound role strain. By explicitly isolating Community Pressures and Community Support of Education, the PTO operationalizes role conflict and environmental friction as significant contributors to institutional morale.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire has been established across decades of empirical field trials, doctoral dissertations, and published psychometric investigations, encompassing construct, criterion-related, and discriminant validity paradigms.

Construct and Discriminant Validity

The PTO demonstrates exceptional capacity to discriminate both between disparate school institutions and between individual educators within the same educational facility. In the primary standardization study of 3,023 high school educators across 76 schools (60 in Indiana, 16 in Oregon), one-way analyses of variance confirmed statistically significant differences (p < .001) in total morale scores and subscale profiles across schools. This confirms that the instrument effectively captures genuine variations in institutional organizational climate rather than idiosyncratic subjective noise.

To further establish construct validity, Bentley and Rempel deployed a comparative perceptual methodology. Building principals completed the PTO by projecting how their respective instructional faculties would respond. A comparative statistical analysis demonstrated that the differences between the median subscale scores reported by teachers and the projected median scores estimated by their principals were not statistically significant across the majority of dimensions. This alignment confirms that the instrument accurately captures observable organizational realities that school leadership can reliably detect, while simultaneously preserving discriminant sensitivity to identify underlying staff disaffection.

Criterion-Related and Concurrent Validity

Subsequent educational research has consistently linked PTO scores to validated organizational outcomes. Extensive studies on educational leadership (e.g., Carroll, 1992; Zbikowski, 1992) have documented robust correlations between high teacher scores on Teacher Rapport with Principal and transformational leadership behaviors measured via the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ). Similarly, investigations examining institutional decision-making structures (Pikos, 1993) demonstrated that higher scores across the PTO’s administrative and curriculum subscales strongly correlate with structured teacher participation in site-based shared governance.

Modern applications of the instrument, such as research by Ivie (2007) and Fisher (2010), demonstrate high concurrent validity with contemporary measures of occupational burnout, such as the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). Significant negative correlations are consistently observed between the PTO’s Satisfaction with Teaching and Teacher Load subscales and the Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization dimensions of occupational burnout inventories.

Reliability

The Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire displays exemplary internal consistency and temporal stability, substantiated by rigorous classical test theory metrics reported in the original technical manual and confirmed in independent replication studies.

Internal Consistency

During scale development, internal consistency was evaluated utilizing Kuder-Richardson formulas (specifically modified for polytomous Likert-type items, yielding coefficients equivalent to Cronbach’s alpha). Across the normative sample, internal consistency coefficients for the individual subscales ranged from 0.79 to 0.98. The overall reliability coefficient for the omnibus 100-item scale reached an exceptional 0.96, indicating minimal measurement error and high item covariance within designated factor domains.

Test-Retest Stability

Temporal stability was established through test-retest administration protocols conducted across multiple secondary school faculties over defined temporal intervals. The reported test-retest correlation coefficients by subscale are as follows:

• Teacher Rapport with Principal: r = 0.88
• Satisfaction with Teaching: r = 0.84
• Teacher Status: r = 0.81
• Teacher Salary: r = 0.81
• Rapport Among Teachers: r = 0.80
• School Facilities and Services: r = 0.80
• Community Support of Education: r = 0.78
• Teacher Load: r = 0.77
• Curriculum Issues: r = 0.76
• Community Pressures: r = 0.62

The coefficients range from 0.62 to 0.88, yielding a median test-retest correlation of 0.87. The slightly lower coefficient observed for Community Pressures (0.62) reflects the dynamic, fluctuating nature of external community controversies and sociopolitical events, whereas intrinsic dimensions of vocational satisfaction and administrative rapport exhibit outstanding longitudinal stability.

Factor Analysis

The structural configuration of the Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire was derived through an iterative, rigorous factor-analytic protocol. The preliminary instrument consisted of 145 items hypothesized to span eight intuitive domains: teaching as an occupation, relationships with students, relationships with other teachers, administrative policies and procedures, relationships with community, curriculum factors, working conditions, and economic factors.

Exploratory Factor Analysis and Factor Extraction

In the primary empirical validation phase, an initial sample of 570 high school educators completed the 145-item prototype. The data were submitted to a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) accompanied by an oblique rotation (recognizing that educational morale dimensions are naturally correlated rather than strictly orthogonal). The initial extraction yielded eight identifiable empirical factors.

To refine the scale’s discriminant precision and construct stability across varied institutional environments, subsequent factor analyses were conducted separately across partitioned sub-samples stratified by morale level: high, middle, and low morale groups. This comparative factor-analytic technique revealed that the original eight-factor conceptualization masked critical institutional nuances. Specifically, the general administrative and community categories fragmented into distinct, psychologically meaningful vectors.

The Definitive Ten-Factor Structure

The revised factorial solution produced the definitive ten-factor structure, resulting in the reduction of the instrument to 100 psychometrically balanced items. The structural allocation of items across factors is delineated below:

• Factor 1: Teacher Rapport with Principal (20 items: 2, 3, 5, 7, 12, 33, 38, 41, 43, 44, 61, 62, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 92, 93, 95)
• Factor 2: Satisfaction with Teaching (20 items: 19, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 46, 47, 50, 51, 56, 58, 60, 76, 78, 82, 83, 86, 89, 100)
• Factor 3: Rapport Among Teachers (14 items: 18, 22, 23, 28, 48, 52, 53, 54, 55, 77, 80, 84, 87, 90)
• Factor 4: Teacher Salary (7 items: 4, 9, 32, 36, 39, 65, 75)
• Factor 5: Teacher Load (11 items: 1, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 31, 34, 40, 42, 45)
• Factor 6: Curriculum Issues (5 items: 17, 20, 25, 79, 88)
• Factor 7: Teacher Status (8 items: 13, 15, 35, 37, 63, 64, 68, 71)
• Factor 8: Community Support of Education (5 items: 66, 67, 94, 96, 97)
• Factor 9: School Facilities and Services (5 items: 16, 21, 49, 57, 59)
• Factor 10: Community Pressures (5 items: 81, 85, 91, 98, 99)

In addition to the primary 100-item instrument, Bentley and Rempel developed the PTO Supplement, which contains two supplemental factor subscales: Teacher Rapport with School Board (10 items) and Teacher Rapport with Superintendent (10 items). These supplemental modules allow researchers to assess district-level governance without compromising the psychometric integrity of the core 100-item school-building inventory.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications of the Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire are detailed below:

• Instrument Type: Standardized multi-dimensional self-report psychometric rating scale / organizational climate opinionnaire.
• Target Population: Certified primary, intermediate, middle, junior high, and senior high school instructional personnel, subject-matter specialists, and school-based faculty members.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil inventory or contemporary secure digital survey form; administered individually or in group faculty settings.
• Item Count: 100 declarative items (core instrument) plus an optional 20-item district supplement.
• Administration Duration: Approximately 20 to 30 minutes for complete self-administration.
• Response Format: Four-point forced-choice Likert-type response continuum:
  • Agree (Assigned a numerical weight of 4 for positively phrased items)
  • Probably Agree (Assigned a numerical weight of 3 for positively phrased items)
  • Probably Disagree (Assigned a numerical weight of 2 for positively phrased items)
  • Disagree (Assigned a numerical weight of 1 for positively phrased items)
• Scoring and Directionality:
  • Positively worded items are scored directly: Agree = 4, Probably Agree = 3, Probably Disagree = 2, Disagree = 1.
  • Negatively keyed items are reverse-scored to ensure high numerical scores uniformly represent favorable morale: Agree = 1, Probably Agree = 2, Probably Disagree = 3, Disagree = 4.
  • Exactly 26 items are reverse-scored: Items 1, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 18, 25, 30, 31, 34, 40, 42, 45, 54, 56, 60, 71, 72, 76, 79, 81, 85, 98, and 99.
  • Total Score Range: 100 to 400 points, where higher cumulative scores denote exceptionally elevated general teacher morale. Subscale raw scores are derived by summing the scoring weights of items comprising each respective factor. Standardized percentile norms are available for school medians across all subscales and grade levels.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire was officially published in 1970 following extensive multi-year normative field testing by Ralph R. Bentley and Averno M. Rempel. Intellectual property rights, technical manuals, test booklets, and scoring matrices were originally registered with and managed by the Purdue Research Foundation at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.

While historically disseminated commercially as copyrighted paper testing materials by the Purdue Research Foundation and University Book Store, the PTO instrument, its underlying subscales, and scoring methodologies have been widely reproduced across academic dissertations, educational measurement texts, and non-commercial institutional research studies for non-profit scholarly investigations. Researchers and institutional administrators seeking to administer the PTO for large-scale institutional assessments, commercial benchmarking, or formal district evaluations should consult the Purdue Research Foundation or obtain appropriate institutional clearance to ensure compliance with historical copyright protections and appropriate scholarly attribution.

References

Bentley, R. R., & Rempel, A. M. (1970). Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire. Purdue Research Foundation, Purdue University.

Bentley, R. R., & Rempel, A. M. (1980). Manual for the Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire. Purdue Research Foundation.

Carroll, D. F. O. (1992). Teacher morale as related to school leadership behavior (Doctoral dissertation, East Tennessee State University). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Fisher, P. V. (2010). An investigation of leadership best practices and teacher morale in six community college child development centers in southern California (Doctoral dissertation, Capella University). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Herzberg, F. (1966). Work and the nature of man. World Publishing Company.

Ivie, S. C. (2007). School leaders’ behavior informed by thirteen core leadership competencies and the relationship to teacher job satisfaction (Doctoral dissertation, University of Memphis). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. Harper & Row.

Pikos, S. (1993). Perceptions of building administrators and teachers at the secondary level on the role of the teacher in shared decision-making (Doctoral dissertation, Wayne State University). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Zbikowski, L. G. (1992). A study of the relationship between elementary principal leadership behavior and teacher morale (Doctoral dissertation, Michigan State University). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. https://doi.org/10.25335/M5B27PR2M

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)