Group Decision-Making Communication Effectiveness (GDMCE) Scale

The ability of groups to make the most effective decisions possible has long been a primary focus of the decision-making communicative process within any group. As such, the effectiveness of groups in making decisions has been an integral part of communication theory and research for decades. Even though past group decision-making effectiveness research has demonstrated that specific approaches to evaluating group effectiveness have been successful in explaining much of what caused groups to be effective, each theory and its resulting research offered only partial solutions. The functional perspective is a task-focused approach analyzed within existing group function that largely ignores the pre-group inputs and group structural effects that have been found to exist within and have an effect on group decision-making effectiveness. The structural perspective is a mostly structurally-focused approach analyzed within pre-group input and group structural functions with little to no task-based or specific group functioning considerations offered to enhance group decision-making effectiveness. In addition, additional research calling for the integration of these two theoretical perspectives has gone unheeded. The purpose of this dissertation was to propose a new integrated communication measure of group decision-making communication effectiveness (GDMCE) that would seek to provide a more comprehensive explanation for the specific influences of functional and structural perspectives on group decision making, measuring both the task-related and structurally-related decision-making effectiveness of groups and providing the opportunity for groups to explore those factors that might be supporting or undermining their decision-making effectiveness. This new integrated GDMCE measure was developed using prevailing research methodologies for new scale development that advocate a specific multi-step procedure. First, a two-part procedure established content validity for the measure through initial item to definition appropriateness. Second, an additional test of content validity was conducted through strength of item to total ratings. Third, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to validate the underlying structure of the new measure. Fourth, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to confirm the fit of the new measure. Fifth and finally, the new measure was evaluated for convergent, discriminant and criterion-related validity. Ultimately, the new measure confirmed 12 factors from previous research and demonstrated convergent, discriminant and criterion-related validity.