DEVELOPMENT OF A SUPERVISORY PRACTICES TEST
by
Sri Mahmood Saatchi
Summary
The investigation reported in the thesis had twofold objectives : (i) development of a supervisory practices test (called the Supervisory Behavior Schedule or the S.B.S.) dealing with some typical situations which an average supervisor in an industry has to face, and requiring the subject to indicate the way he would handle the same by checking one of the alternatives provided for each situation; and (ii)- a comparative analysis of supervisory roles and practices tested on the schedule on samples of supervisors drawn from some industries in India and Iran.
In the first chapter, by way of providing an introductory framework, the changed role of supervisors and their importance to industry have been discussed, and the two objectives of the study have been outlined.
In the second chapter, a detailed analysis of supervisory roles and qualities has been made. Based on earlier researches, effort was made to elaborate the pattern of effective supervision. Some of the important studies conducted in India and abroad have been suw-marized, and importance of some personal qualities , attitudes and dispositions, and pattern of supervisory functioning have been analysed at some length. The chapter is concluded by describing at some length the problem of the present investigation, and formulation of a few hypotheses.
The third chapter describes in details the various steps taken by the investigator in developing the Supervisory Behavior Schedule. The preparation of the test items, their preliminary tryout, item analysis, cluster analysis, and calculation of the reliability of the measure both on the Indian and Iranian samples have been dealt at length. The overall split half reliabilities of the measure on the Indian and Iranian samples were found to be 0.88 and 0.84 respectively.
The fourth chapter describes the steps towards the validation of the schedule against the ratings made by the superiors of the supervisors tested in Indian and Iranian industries. This was done by correlating the test scores of the supervisors with the scores on the rating scale, comparison on the S.B.S.
scores of the extreme groups formed on the basis of scores on the rating scale, and also comparison of the high and low scoring supervisors on the schedule on their ratings-made by their superiors. In spite of high internal consistency and "content validity", the measure did not yield a satisfactory validity index against the external criterion of ratings of the superiors.
In the fifth chapter, a comparative analysis of the scores of the supervisors from industries in India and Iran has been attempted, and their differences have been analysed.
The relationships of the scores obtained on the ratings scale and on the Supervisory Behavior Schedule with the age of the supervisors were analysed, as well as the that between general ability and scores on the Supervisory Behavior Schedule.
In the last chapter, the findings of the present investigation especially with regard to the reliability and validity of the measure, and the differences on it observed between the Indian and Iranian samples have been discussed. An effort has also been made to understand the present findings in the context of Fiedler's contingency model of leadership.
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