Measuring Public Service Motivation: An Assessment of Construct Reliability and Validity

TLDR

Public administration literature asserts that individuals in public service careers are motivated differently from other Americans, with public service motivation defined as a predisposition to respond to motives rooted in public institutions. The study develops a scale to measure public service motivation. The scale comprises six dimensions—attraction to public policymaking, commitment to the public interest, civic duty, social justice, self‑sacrifice, and compassion—measured with Likert items and validated via confirmatory factor analysis. Initial reliability and validity analyses confirm the scale’s soundness.

Abstract

The public administration literature makes many assertions that the motivations of individuals who pursue public service careers differ in important ways from other members of American society. This research advances the study of these assertions by creating a scale to measure public service motivation. Public service motivation (PSM) represents an individual's predisposition to respond to motives grounded primarily or uniquely in public institutions. The construct is associated conceptually with six dimensions: attraction to public policy making, commitment to the public interest, civic duty, social justice, self-sacrifice, and compassion. Likert-type items are developed for each dimension to create the PSM scale. The measurement theory for the scale is tested using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The present study reports initial reliability and validity results.