Adaptation of the Short Form of the Servant Leadership Scale to Turkish Culture in the Context of Public Schools: A Validity and Reliability Study

The aim of this study is to adapt the short form of (seven-items) Servant Leadership Scale (SLS), developed by Liden et al. (2015), to Turkish culture in the context of educational organizations. The scale, consisting of seven items and a single factor, was adapted to Turkish, and its Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was found to be 0.80, 0.81, 0.89 respectively across three different sample groups. The study group of the research consists of teachers working in public schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in the central districts of Odunpazarı and Tepebaşı in Eskişehir during the 2022-2023 academic year. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted to ensure the construct validity of the scale, which was administered to 393 teachers. The analyses in this study were conducted using the JASP 0.16.4.0 program. In the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), the maximum likelihood estimation method and Pearson covariance matrix were utilized. Additionally, to determine the reliability of the Servant Leadership Scale, McDonald’s omega reliability coefficient and Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient were calculated, and item-total score correlations of the scale were examined. The CFA results indicated that the model fit indices met the critical thresholds. In addition to Cronbach's alpha, McDonald's omega coefficient and item-total correlations were calculated to determine the reliability of the scale. The findings demonstrated that the coefficients were above 0.70, indicating that the scale is reliable and valid. The lowest score that can be obtained from the scale, which does not have reverse scored items, is 7 and the highest score is 35. Results suggest that the short form of the Servant Leadership Scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool in Turkish culture.