Objective: Organizational cronyism is a significant issue in public organizations, particularly educational institutions, whose identification and assessment require reliable tools. The present study aimed to develop and validation a questionnaire for identifying organizational cronyism in educational settings.
Method: This research employed a mixed-method approach with a sequential exploratory design. In the qualitative phase, data were collected and analyzed using descriptive phenomenology through semi-structured interviews with 17 employees of the Department of Education in Hamedan Province. Based on the qualitative findings, a 65-item questionnaire was developed. Following face and content validity assessments, it was administered to 545 employees of the same organization using stratified random sampling. The psychometric properties of the questionnaire were examined using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and Cronbach’s alpha.
Results: Psychometric analyses revealed that the final questionnaire, consisting of 44 items and five main factors—'favoritism,' 'unfair allocation,' 'unregulated appointments,' 'partisanship,' and 'kinship hierarchy'—explained 57.94% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis results indicated that all final items had factor loadings above 0.40, and the fit indices (CFI = 0.908, TLI = 0.901, RMSEA = 0.057) demonstrated a good fit of the measurement model. The questionnaire's convergent validity was 0.621, its reliability coefficient measured by Cronbach’s alpha was 0.92, and the test-retest correlation coefficient was 0.733. The results confirmed that the Organizational Cronyism Questionnaire has satisfactory validity and reliability.
Conclusions: The Organizational Cronyism Questionnaire is a comprehensive, reliable, and valid instrument for assessing organizational cronyism in educational environments.