Preliminary Development of an Alternative Measure of Isolation: The Construct of Institutional Isolation

Abstract

The Perceptions of Inclusion and Exclusion scale was administered to a sample of 152 university faculty and was used to develop the construct of Institutional Isolation. Preliminary estimates of reliability, factorial, and discriminant data suggest better psychometric characteristics than those of Dean's (1961) General Alienation scale. Institutional isolation reflects employees' sense of adjustment to and acceptance by the organization and is conceptually needed as a precursor to the study of socialization and mentorship. Indeed, further refinement of the scale may provide additional insight into the experiences of particular racial and ethnic groups whose workplace experiences may be less favorable than those of their Euro-American peers.