Revising Perry's Measurement Scale of Public Service Motivation

J. L. Perry (1996) identified a 24-item multidimensional scale to measure public service motivation (PSM). But the measurement scale of PSM is not fully examined. On the basis of Perry's items, S. Kim (in press) produced a 14-item scale of four factors, but the dimension of attraction to policy making (APM) in the second-order model is doubtful. The present study revises the questionable items of the APM dimension into more positive and relevant ones and tests whether the dimension of APM is valid. Two independent samples ( n 1 = 690 and n 2 = 498) are used for the scale validation. The statistical analysis applied confirmatory factor analysis using Amos 7.0. The modification process, which generated a 12-item scale for four factors, produced a valid and reliable measure: the test results provided support for convergent validity as well as discriminant validity of the four-factor model, and the reliability coefficients of all subscales were good.