Construction and Validation of An Instrument for Measuring University Objectives in Departmental Self - evaluation

Assessing quality of higher education systems has been considered as a major issue in many countries during the past two decades. Accreditation model, which includes internal quality assurance and external quality assessment, has been applied to assess and improve the quality in higher education systems. Application of internal quality assessment started in 1996 in Iran. The exercise indicated the need for an instrument to measure institutional and departmental mission and objectives. This research project was undertaken to respond to the above need. In doing so, based on the experience from Institutional Goals Inventory (IGI) instrument a draft version of a questionnaire was prepared in Persian language. It was validated among sample of faculty members of Tehran University. The Persian version of the IGI is applied to clarify university mission and goals. Using this questionnaire as a base, another questionnaire was developed to delineate departmental missions and objectives. The technical characteristics of this instrument are reported in this article. The results indicated that the PIGI is valid and reliable instrument to measure university goals and develop departmental objectives for self–evaluation.