The concept of organizational health was first mentioned by Miles as "the school system's ability not only to function effectively, but to develop and grow into a more fully-functioning system" (Miles,1965, p.12; Miles, 1969, p.378). Miles used human health as metaphor for organizational health. He introduced ten dimensions of organizational health under three basic topics. The first three dimensions relate to task: goal focus, communication adequacy, optimal power equalization. The second group of dimensions relates to the internal state of the system and its inhabitants' "maintenance" needs. These are resource utilization, cohesiveness, and morale. The final dimensions are described under the growth and change title: innovations, autonomy, adaptation, and problem solving adequacy. Kimston & Sonnebend (1973, p.544) summarizes these dimensions as follows:

1. Goal Focus. The goals of the organization are reasonably clear to the organization members and reasonably well accepted by them.
2. Communication Adequacy. There is relatively distortion-free communication across the organization and to and from the surrounding environment.
3. Optimal Power Equalization. The distribution of influence is relatively equitable.
4. Resource Utilization. Personnel are used effectively.
5. Cohesiveness. The organization knows "who it is."
6. Morale. A summated set of individual sentiments, centering around feelings of well-being, satisfaction, and pleasure.
7. Innovativeness. Tends to invent new procedures, move toward new goals, produce new kinds of products, diversify itself, and become more rather than less differentiated over time.
8. Autonomy. Would not respond passively to demands from the outside and would not respond destructively or rebelliously to perceived demands.
9. Adaptation. The system's ability to bring about corrective change in itself is faster than the change cycle in the surrounding environment.
10. Problem-Solving Adequacy. Has well developed structure and procedures for sensing the existence of problems, for inventing possible solutions, for implementing them, and for evaluating their effectiveness.

Childers (1983) claims that "organizations, like the people who compromise them, can be either healthy or sick. The healthy organization is functional, while the sick organization is dysfunctional" (p. 4). Ellsworth & Rickard (1978) also use human health as a metaphor for school health, but he says that it is more difficult to determine the school's pulse "to reaffirm that 'our schools' is alive and healthy" (p. 1). Neugebaurer (1990) used the same metaphor and said that "for the body to be healthy, a myriad of bodily functions must operate in perfect harmony. Likewise, for an organization to be healthy, a complex array of interpersonal and administrative functions must be addressed simultaneously" (p. 38).

One of the essential characteristics of school leaders is educational assessment in order to improve the quality of schooling and raise the level of student achievement (Wallace, 1992). According to Wallace (1992), the educational leader must be "skilled in the use of various measures that provide indicators of the health and productivity of a school or district" (p.11). Hoy, Tarter, & Kottkamp (1991) summarized the implications for practitioners and scholars of administrations of the Organizational Health Inventory. The implications for practitioners include:

• To assess school health and climate before beginning change efforts.
• To improve instructional effectiveness indirectly through the development of an open, healthy, and trustful climate.
• To use OHI for the continuing assessments of their own administrative practice.

Implications from OHI research can be helpful to scholars who are researching the following questions:

• To what extent are the OCDQ and OHI useful tools in the prediction of school effectiveness?
• What conditions promote healthy and open schools?
• What are the elements that combine or intervene in the relationship of climate or health to effectiveness?

The main aim of this study was to find out the opinions of teachers and administrators related to organizational health of their schools in Bolu, Turkey. Another aim of this study was to develop an organizational health inventory to determine each school's health profile. The final aim of this study was to find out if there is a significant difference between the opinions of teachers relating to organizational health of their schools with respect to their sex, branch, job experience, working years at the same school, and level of education.

Organizational health has been suggested for use for change and innovation of the schools by Miles (1965), Kimston & Sonnabend (1973), Kimston & Sonnabend (1975), Cicchelli (1975), Ellsworth & Rickard (1978), and Clark & Fairman (1983). Later on, Kimston & Sonnabend (1973; 1975) developed an organizational health inventory. They found five dimensions: decision-making, interpersonal relationship, innovativeness, autonomy, and school-community relation. Ellsworth & Rickard (1978) collected items related to students, parents, teachers, and programs as indicators of organizational health. Hoy & Feldman (1987) developed the Organizational Health Inventory in seven dimensions under institutional, managerial, and technical levels. These are institutional integrity, initiating structure, resource allocation, principal influence, consideration, academic emphasis and morale.

Neugebauer (1990) developed an organizational health checklist by collecting items from different organizational health questionnaires to measure the childcare center's effectiveness. Dimensions included in the questionnaire are planning and evaluation, motivation and control, group functioning, staff development, decision-making and problem solving, financial management, and environmental interaction. Those dimensions are meaningful and provide insight for administrators in several ways. First, they represent the optimum level of functioning for a healthy organization and will help administrators see the weaknesses and strengths of their organizations. Second, they can give administrators a different perspective (like outsiders) to reexamine their organizations. Nevertheless, Neugebauer (1990) goes further to suggest either researchers or practitioners be cautious when conducting it. They may also use other data also to decide whether to make organizational changes.

Researchers also developed inventories for different levels of schools to examine the health and the climate of these particular organizations. Hoy, Feldman, and Kottkamp (1991) developed the Organizational Health Inventory for elementary (OHI-E) and for secondary schools (OHI-S), and Hoy, Sabo, & Associates (1998) for middle schools.

Organizational health questionnaires have been used for theory/research and practice. Childers (1985) claims that school principals are responsible for enhancing "the organizational health and productivity of their schools" (p. 5). Childers (1985, p. 5-7) suggests that in order to enhance the health of their schools, school principals should follow these steps:

• Reexamining their role and function in order to enhance the health of their school.
• Examining the current professional skills of their staff by applying an inventory to make sure that their staff has necessary skills.
• Reexamining the definitions of the 10 factors of organizational health. Identifying two strong and two weak dimensions of their schools.
• Observe and record the organizational behavior that supports their beliefs about the strengths and weaknesses of the schools they select. Spending time to do this.
• If their recordings suggest that the organizational health does not need improvement, then share this observation with the educational leaders of those buildings and encourage them to continue providing such effective leadership.
• Scheduling a conference to confer with the educational leaders to those buildings and determine if they, too, think that the organizational health concept needs further consideration.
• Collecting organizational health data by using the Organizational Health Questionnaire to provide feedback.
• Analyzing this data, and interpreting it with building's leaders.
• Determining organizational problems and solving them.

Childers (1985) finishes his argument:

the organizational health of a school has important implications for the performances of the employees and students. It can be enhanced by a systematic diagnosis and by the development and implementation of an intervention plan (p.7).

To Childers, as a result of following these steps school principals can bring their schools to the optimal condition of health and vitality.

Childers & Fairman (1986) claim that since school counselors perceive themselves as agents of change in individual and group behavior, they can be effective facilitators for enhancing organizational health. Childers & Fairman (1986) conclude that:

School counselors have the experience, unique organizational placement, and skills to help principals take a proactive stance toward improving the organizational placement, and skills to help principals take a proactive stance toward improving the organizational health of the school (p.336).

Determining the organizational health of the schools is not only helpful for the administrative purpose, but also for effective teachers and teaching. Hoy & Woolfolk (1993) examined the relationship between two dimensions of teacher efficacy (general and personal) and aspects of a healthy school climate. They found that a healthy school climate is conductive to the development of teachers' beliefs that they can influence student learning.

Polansky & Jones (1988) conducted a study to find out if there is any statistically significant relationship existing between selected organizational health variables (i.e., morale, adaptiveness, optimal power equalization, resource utilization, cohesiveness, leadership and planning) and selected financial data, like expenditure per pupil, pupil services, maximum, and minimum teacher salary etc. They found that there is a relationship between educational spending and the well-being of a school organization.

Organizational health as a concept has been used not only for the purpose of research but also for the practical reasons in different fields of education.

The population of this study consisted of 835 teachers and administrators (principals, vice principals, and assistant principals) who worked in 34 high schools in Bolu, Turkey. One of the schools didn't participate in this study, so the total population was 810 teachers and administrators. A total of 485 returned questionnaires.

The addresses of high schools, including vocational high schools, were gathered from the Directorate of National Education of Bolu by the researcher. Initially, 10 schools were randomly selected, and from those, 418 teachers and administrators participated in the pilot study. The distribution of participants according to their sex, branch, level of education, job experience and working year at the same schools are shown below.

Table 1
Distribution of participants according to their sex

Table 2
Distribution of participants according to their job experience

Table 3
Distribution of participants according to their branch

Table 4
Distribution of participants according to their level of education

Table 5
Distribution of participants according to their working years at the same school

The Organizational Health Inventory (OHI) is an instrument to evaluate the climate of schools. Rather than focusing on the openness of the climate, the OHI describes the health of behavior and interactions in schools. A healthy school is described as the school in which the institutional, managerial, and technical levels are in harmony. The school meets functional needs and successfully copes with disruptive external forces and directs its energies towards its mission. Each dimension of health was selected to represent basic needs of schools: to adapt to environmental demands, to achieve goals, to satisfy participant needs, and to create cohesiveness (Hoy, Sabo, & Associates, 1998; Hoy & Tarter, 1997; Hoy & Hannum, 1997; Hoy & Wolfolk 1993; Hoy, Tarter, & Kottkamp, 1991; Hoy, Tarter, & Bliss, 1990; Tarter, Hoy & Kottkamp, 1990; and Hoy & Feldman, 1987).

An Organizational Health Inventory was developed by the researcher in order to determine the organizational health of the secondary schools in Bolu. To prepare the item pool, the literature was reviewed and all organizational health inventories and studies were consulted. 122 items were developed under six dimensions, including: organizational integrity, leadership, identity, internal interaction, environmental interaction, and organizational product. A healthy person was used as a metaphor in that a healthy person is expected to have an identity, to have healthy relations with external environment as well as the internal environment, like having conflict, but not being self-destructive; and should progress towards goals. Finally, a healthy person is expected to produce healthy products, either in his/her personal or professional life.

These items were reviewed with my advisor, Prof. Dr. Ibrahim Ethem Basaran of Ankarra University, and thereby reduced from 122 to 104. To assess face validity, these items were then sent to 12 scholars at three different departments of educational administration at three different universities in Turkey. Utilizing their opinions, the item pool stabilized at 100 items for the pilot study.

The questionnaire consisted of two parts. In the first part, there were demographic questions related to the participants' sex, level of education, job experience, branch, and years of working at the same school. In the second part, there were 100 items relating to the organizational health of the secondary schools. These were sent to 418 participants who were asked to indicate the most appropriate answer from the following Likert scale responses: very often, sometimes, rarely, and never. 250 questionnaires were returned. 7 of them were not completed appropriately 243 were, therefore, processed. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coeffecient was .95.

Factor analysis then indicated that the items were grouped under five different categories. Kiaser normalization was used and eigen values above 1.62 were gathered. Factor loadings above .50 were taken and the item size of the questionnaire reduced to 53. Final reliability coefficient was .95. To determine each group's internal reliability, Cronbach alpha for each group was calculated. The name of each group and their reliability coefficient, eigen values, variance, and total variance are shown in Table 6.

Table 6

This evidence indicated that this instrument could be used as a reliable and valid measure of the organizational health of the secondary schools in Bolu, Turkey.

The OHI was sent to 838 educators at 34 schools. 485 out of 550 questionnaires (406 teachers and 79 administrators, 2 missing value) were usable for the analysis. Schools in the city were visited by the researcher and questionnaires given to the teachers and administrators. The aim of the study was explained verbally, and specific instructions were given. For the rest of the schools, data was collected by mail. Overall, it took three months to collect the data.

Descriptive statistics were used for analysis of the demographic characteristics of participants and frequencies of items. One-way analysis of variance was used to assess differences between groups in educational background, job experience, branch, years working at that school, and their opinions about items. To determine significance of differences between the main scores of male and female teachers and of differences between main scores of teachers and administrators, t-testing was used.

Analyses was conducted on these subproblems:

1) Difference between the opinions of teachers and school administrators about the organizational health of their school.

2) The organizational health profile of the each school and any difference between health profiles related to the dimensions. Any difference in health profiles between and among the same type of schools.

3) Difference between teachers' opinions about each dimension of organizational health of their schools with respect to sex, level of education, job experience, branch, and working years at the same schools.

In this study, a healthy school was defined as having five qualities:

Organizational leadership. Leaders in a healthy school are able to set the aims and the objectives of the school, plan how to achieve them, use resources effectively, and control the process with the help and vision of the staff.

Organizational integrity. Means protecting schools from external destructive sources, while providing and developing effective interaction among teachers, students, and administrators.

Environmental Integration. A healthy school has effective environmental and internal interactions for adjusting to technological innovation, responding to needs of society, and keeping conflict at a minimum.

Organizational Identity. A healthy school has a definable feeling, atmosphere, or milieu that promotes school and staff moral.

Organizational product. Presence of feedback and resources needed to generate a healthy product.

The results indicated significant differences between opinions of teachers and administrators about organizational leadership (t=0.000 p<0.05), organizational integrity (t=0.001, p <0.05), environmental interaction (t=0.004, p<0.05), and organizational products (t=0.01, p<0.05). No significant difference on organizational identity was found (t=0.07, p>0.05).

Each school's organizational health profile was determined by a formula created and applied by Hoy, Tarter & Kottkamp (1991), Hoy & Tarter (1997), and Hoy, Sabo, & Associates (1998). Then schools were grouped and their health profiles compared according to their types, such as General High Schools, Anatolian High Schools and Vocational High Schools (Anatolian schools admit on the basis of centralized exams and instruction is given in another language such as English), and Vocational Schools.

It was found that the health score for each dimension and each school was different though, because of confidentiality, the scores of individual schools cannot be given. Table 7 shows the minimum and maximum values for each dimension.

In order to find out if there is any significant difference between opinions of male and female teachers related to each dimension of the organizational health of their schools t-test was used. One-way analysis of variance was used in order to find out whether or not there is a significant difference between teachers' opinions related to the each dimensions of organizational health of their schools with respect to their sex, level of education, job experience, branch, and working years at the same schools. The findings will be given under each dimension.

Table 7
Minimum and maximum values of each dimension

Schools were first grouped as general high schools and vocational high schools, and their average organizational health profiles was compared. Table 8 provides the results of this comparison. Then, schools were grouped according to the following categories: General High Schools, Anatolian High Schools, Anatolian Vocational High Schools, and Vocational High Schools.

Table 8
Organizational health profiles of General High Schools and Vocational High Schools

A significant difference was found between male and female teachers’ opinions about the organizational leadership dimension of their schools (t=0.003, p<0.05). There was no significant difference by teachers' branch (F=0.0718, p>0.05), job experience (F=0.7021, p>0.05), working years at the same schools (F=0.0838, p>0.05), or level of education (F=0.6657, p>0.05).

No significant differences of opinions about organizational integrity were found by teachers’ sex (t=0.315, p>0.05), branch (F=0.1705, p>0.05), job experience (F=0.3419, p>0.05), or level of education (F=0.9668, p>0.05). There was a significant difference by years working at the same schools (F=0.0089, p<0.05).

Table 9.  Organizational health profiles of General High Schools, Anatolian High Schools,
Anatolian Vocational High Schools and Vocational High Schools

No significant differences of opinions about the environmental interaction dimension of their schools was found by sex (t=0.5176, p>0.05), branch (F=0.1079, p>0.05), job experience (F=0.0838, p>0.05), years working at the same school (F=0.1866, p>0.05), or level of education (F=0.9942, p>0.05).

No significant differences of teachers’ opinions about organizational identity were found by sex (t=0.351, p>0.05), branch (F=0.3460, p>0.05), job experience (F=0.9195, p>0.05), working years at the same schools (F=0.5942, p>0.05), or level of education (F=0.1641, p>0.05).

No significant differences of opinions about the organizational product dimension was found by sex (t=0.933, p>0.05), branch (F=0.1491, p>0.05), job experience (F=0.1645, p>0.05), working years at the same schools (F=0.1881, p>0.05), or level of education (F=0.3631, p>0.05).

There has been ongoing discussion in the literature about ways of improving the quality of schools and student achievement. One of the essential needs of schools is educational assessment to improve school quality (Wallace, 1992). Organizational Health Inventories have been used as tools for assessing schools’ quality, effectiveness and climate (Hoy, Sabo, & Associates, 1998; Barnes, Hunnum, & Hoffman, 1998; Hoy & Tarter, 1997; Hoy & Hannum, 1997; Hoy & Wolfolk, 1993; Hoy, Tarter, & Kottkamp, 1991; Hoy, Tarter, & Bliss, 1990; Tarter, Hoy & Kottkamp, 1990; and Hoy & Feldman, 1987). Organizational Health Inventories have also been suggested for use in the change and innovation of schools by Miles (1965), Kimston & Sonnabend (1973), Kimston & Sonnabend (1975), Chicelli (1975), Ellsworth & Rickard (1978), and Clark & Fairman (1983). This study has shown that Organizational Health Inventories can be used to determine the change and improvement needs of schools because it can give a snapshot of the school (Hoy, Tarter, & Kottkamp, 1991) showing dimensions that should be improved.

Previously, multidimensional Organizational Health Inventories have been developed, such as Kimpston & Sonnabend's (1973; 1975) dimensions (decision-making, interpersonal relationship, innovativeness, autonomy, school-community relations); Hubert's (1984) dimensions (morale, adaptiveness, optimal power utilization, cohesiveness, leadership and planning); Neugebauer's (1990) dimensions (planning and evaluation, motivation and control, group functioning, staff development, financial management, and environmental interaction); and Hoy & Feldman's (1987) dimensions (institutional integrity, principal influence, consideration, initiation structure, resource support, morale, and academic emphasis). The dimensions of Organizational Health Inventory developed in this study combine all of these inventories. The OHI category of organizational integrity is similar to Hoy & Feldman's (1987) institutional integrity dimension. The organizational leadership dimension can be considered a combination of both principal influence and the initiation structure dimensions of Hoy & Feldman's OHI and Hubert's (1984) leadership and planning dimension. The organizational identity dimension covers morale and consideration dimensions from Hoy & Feldman's (1987) OHI. Items similar to academic emphasis were grouped under the organizational product. Finally, the environmental interaction dimension is similar to Neugebauer's (1990) environmental interaction and Hoy & Feldman's (1987), resource support dimension.

One of the important findings of this study is the difference between the opinions of teachers and administrators related to the organizational health of the schools. Items that administrators believe occur "always" at their schools, some teachers believe occur "sometimes" or "very rarely". Thus, there is a discrepancy between administrator-teacher beliefs about the organizational health of their schools. Hoy & Tarter (1997) found, similarly, that in the USA there is a discrepancy between administrators and teachers perspectives related to school climate. Given this finding, the organizational health profile of a school may give administrators clues as to where there are problems in order to further improvement.

The "average" school profile provides criteria to compare each school with. If a school has a lower than average score on any dimension, it may show that it needs change and improvement. In this study, the average organizational health score was 507.02 with 14 schools scoring lower. As for the scores of the organizational health dimensions, the average organizational leadership score was 510.09 with 13 schools scoring lower. The average score for organizational integrity was 520.29 with 11 schools scoring lower. The average score for the environmental interaction was 483.82 with 17 schools scoring lower. For the organizational identity, the average score was 510.65 with 15 schools scoring lower. Finally, the organizational product average score was 510.77 with 13 schools scoring lower. When the average scores of dimensions were compared, organizational integrity had highest average score (520.29) and environmental interaction the lowest average score (483.82). Other dimensions were more or less close to each other.

These results seem to indicate that schools tend to have more problems with environmental interaction. The Turkish education system is centralized with education seen as the job of the state, teachers, and administrators. There is not much parental and community involvement in schools on the local level. Since the system is centralized, schools that are close to the center get more attention and resources. Those that are farther away get less.

The organizational health inventory can be used for practical as well as academic purposes in Turkey. Although this research was the first to study the organizational health of the Turkish secondary schools, it can be replicated in different areas.

In addition, using this study as a base line, organizational health inventories for middle schools and elementary schools can be developed and their health profiles assessed. These profiles can be used either for practical purposes, such as assessing change and improvement needs, or for determining problems for administrative practice. In order to have better evidence about school operation, organizational health measures might be supported with qualitative data which provides richer descriptive information.

As the findings of this study show some schools to have low scores on some of the dimensions, these schools might be observed to triangulate the indications of the quantitative and qualitative data. Schools that have low health scores may then develop improvement plans and apply them.

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