Measuring racial climate in schools of social work: Instrument development and validation

Objective: This article reports the initial validation of an instrument designed to measure racial climate in programs and schools of social work. Method: An unduplicated sample of students from one school of social work (N = 182) responded to a survey of racial climate. Psychometric analyses were computed to determine the reliability and validity of the instrument's scales. Results: The scales attained high levels of internal consistency reliability, had a stable factor structure for the items as they were hypothesized, and performed well in preliminary analyses of convergent construct and known-groups validity. Conclusions: The results provided initial evidence of internal consistency reliability and content, construct, factorial, and known-grouRs validity.