Development of an Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale for University Students

Received 06 Feb, 2018

Accepted 29 Oct, 2019

Published 31 Dec, 2019

The aim of the study was to develop an indigenous scale on the phenomenon of perceived favouritism among university students. A list of 98 items was compiled after reaching saturation level by interviewing 25 university students of BS, individually. Then redundant items were excluded and 39 items were retained. For empirical validation, five experts were approached and after empirical validation, a scale of 38 items was prepared. The pilot study was conducted on 25 university students of BS and revealed that the participants did not face any major problem about comprehension of the scale. Then the scale was administered to the sample of 200 university students for establishing psychometric properties. Results of the scale factor analysis showed significant KMO value and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant and indicated correlation between the items. Three factors were retained through principle component analysis varimax rotation and labelled as Preference, Extra Involvement, and Discrimination. The concurrent validity of Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale with What Is Happening In The Class Scale (Chionh & Fisher, 1998) was found to be significant. Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale is, thus, dependable and valid scale for measuring perceived favouritism among university students.

Almost every student has a favourite teacher and those they like less. Similarly, some teachers also prefer a few of their students than others. Devoted teachers maximize the learning potential of all students in the class without discrimination. Teachers can help their students to grow academically and emotionally because students always play a vital role in the progress of any country. University students hold the central part of the success of the country. Students not only learn but also face and perceive a lot of challenges in the university. One of the most important challenges is perceived favouritism. In all aspects of life, favouritism can be perceived, whether it is in the school, college, university home, or work (Opoku-Amankwa, 2009). Favouritism is defined as selective attention paid by someone in power (i.e., teacher, parent) to another, less powerful person (i.e., student, child), chosen from a group of two or more and where one student has a better result than another (i.e., better learning chances, self-esteem or boosted self-confidence, extra resources provided, etc.). Parents are responsible for their children, but teachers are possibly more responsible than parents or bosses to avoid unfairness, partiality, and biases (Newberry & Davis, 2008).

Teachers have such responsibility because it is where students are first exposed to the environment and learn about sociality, fairness, empathy, justice, consideration, and respect for others. Students do not always learn from a planned syllabus, but rather by their teachers, from their verbal and nonverbal behaviors. A teacher who always calls on particular students of a certain group over rest of the students, they present that unfairness is acceptable. The teachers may or may not be cognizant that they are engaged in performing favouritism and they are using their power through implicit or unintentional behaviors and having great impact on the motivation, emotional, social and academic wellbeing of their students. A teacher should practice fairness because he/she is a role model for students (Opoku-Amankwa, 2009).

The causes of favouritism can be anything like power and possessions. The power such as possession of controlling and influence could be conceived a grounds of favouritism. Davies and Brember (1999) supported that teaching is always a powerful position that can affect students’ self-concept. Most of the time teachers do not realize that their nurtures and social heritage, previous experiences or training affect students apart from their classroom management manners. Favouritism can take place in the form of discriminating attention or differential behavior by the teacher (Sunderland, 2000). Moreover, a number of studies have concluded that boys are the more recipients of a greater percentage of a teacher’s selective attention, eventhough positive (favouritism) or negative (disciplinary) (Newberry & Davis, 2008).

The perceived favouritism creates impact on students in different ways, such as, if students misperceive the use of power and position by teachers, they would consider everyone holding power should take advantage of that powerful position. On the other hand, it is an assault on students’ self-respect, motivation, and right to self-worthy treatment (Gallager & Mayer, 2008). There are numerous pieces of research evidences that establish the impact of teacher’s favouritism. One study showed that teachers’ preferences show to have a vital part in students’ performance. Grade variations were found for the non-preferred group by teachers (Lu et al., 2015). Favouritism can be perceived from a number of ways and it can affect students significantly. Similarly, the Israeli study investigated perceived favouritism of students in classrooms by providing them three different situations. Among all three situations, students reported having more satisfaction in class with no favorite situation and least satisfaction in the obvious favored situation (Zohar & Babad, 1990). Another study also supported and concluded that the students who were heroes of their fellows but not preferred by their teachers had lower scores in educational performance and motivation. Teachers’ preference seems to be a critical indicator of students’ academic performance (Chiu, Lee, & Liang, 2013).

Another study has shown that teachers have a great impact on children’s status through their influential behavior about children’s social reputations and peers’ evaluations (Lu & Chang, 2013). One more study concluded that teachers favor high academic achievers, support prosocial leadership, have an aversion to the aggression, and are somewhat compassionate to social withdrawal (Chang, 2003). One researcher found that favouritism is a practice that has many negative consequences and suggested that it should be avoided by teachers (Papatya, 2007). Another study showed that80% of students perceive one or more pupils as favored and treated with unfair preference. In addition, the parents of the students also reported that the students with high economic status were preferred by the teachers in their children's classrooms (Aydogan, 2008).

In Pakistan, the studies about the favouritism and its impact on various factors remain neglected in this developing society. There is a dearth of systematic studies to determine the pattern of favouritism. Very few systematic studies have been carried out in western countries to address this crucial and important issue of perceived favouritism but in other settings. Favouritism is found in almost all the fields of life, however, many studies have investigated this important phenomenon in work setting. In one study the researchers investigated generational perceptions at work: in-group favouritism and out-group stereotypes and they did not find favouritism in traditional in-group. On the other hand, in-groups supporters reported themselves more favorably as compared to out-groups (Weeks, Weeks, & Long, 2017). Another study conducted by Jensen and McHale (2017) shed light on favouritism amongst siblings. This important phenomenon was investigated by using large sample of 300 families and declared that favouritism is practiced in the families. Similarly, in another study, researchers also explored this phenomenon amongst siblings and found the relationship between the size of family and favouritism. Findings of the study inferred that younger siblings are highly impacted than others (Pedersen, 2018).

The phenomenon of favouritism is being determined by using different instruments that are not directly dealing the phenomenon of perceived favouritism among university students. The study explored teachers’ preference from the rating of the teachers given for their students and the students were asked to write the names of their close friends. No formal tool was used to determine teachers’ preference in the study (Lu, Fung, Farver, Chen, & Chang, 2015). Similarly, in another study the role of perceived teacher support, motivational climate, and psychological need satisfaction in students’ physical education motivation was determined. For this purpose, Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale (Goodenow, 1993) was used, and perceived competence was determined by employing Harter’s (1985) Scale of Athletic Competence for Children. University students are considered as backbone in the success of any country. Their academic motivation can be affected by numerous factors and one of the major challenges is perceived favouritism. This phenomenon has attained less attention from researchers in the past. To the best of our knowledge, no other indigenous scale is available to measure perceived favouritism and hence the need for developing an indigenous scale on perceived favouritism was felt.

METHOD

The scale was developed in four phases. In the first phase the phenomenon was explored by using semistructured interview, in the second phase content validity was established. In the third phase, tryout of the protocol was done and comprehension and last phase was involved in establishing the psychometric properties of the Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale (IPHC).

Phase I: Exploring Phenomenology

The first phase involved exploring the phenomenon of perceived favouritism, finding out its characteristics for the university students, and to generate items for the development of the scale.

Sample. In this step, 25 (12 boys and 13 girls) university students were interviewed. All students were currently enrolled in BS program of various disciplines. Their age range was 18 to 25 years (M = 20.04, SD = 1.82).

Procedure. A semistructured interview was proposed. The study preferred to use an open-ended interview model. The participants were given the right to withdraw their participation and only volunteer participants were interviewed. Each student was approached on an individual basis and their consent was taken. Their free time and availability were asked and interview was scheduled individually. On decided time, the interviewee was approached. The interview was conducted in a peaceful atmosphere with minimum distractions. Permission was taken for a separate classroom to avoid distractions in the interviews where participants were interviewed individually. First of all, they were told the operational definition of Perceived favouritism just to clarify the phenomenon to the participants. Favouritism means discriminating attention given by a person in power (teacher in the context) to another with a lesser extent of power (student in the context), chosen in preference to others and whereas one student has a better consequence than some others. Then, interview was started with an open-ended question. The following were some sample questions that were designed with the help of literature.

1. In your opinion, how teachers give preferences to some students over others which reflect their favouritism?
2. Have you observed anything like this in your classrooms or with your fellows and friends; share with examples.
3. Have you ever faced this thing in your academic career? Give examples.
4. Anything else that you would like to add.

Results. The participants described several aspects of perceived favouritism they could report. After attaining the saturation point items were gathered and a list of items was generated from 25 university students of BS. The responses of the participants were noted very carefully. This exercise ended up with a larger pool of 98 statements. The repetitive items were removed, and well-formed statements were formulated. After an in-depth review, a list of 39 items was narrowed down for empirical validation.

Then the data were organized and sorted by using the process of coding. The data were summarized and synthesized and the concepts, themes, and ideas were given codes to fit the categories. Three themes were generated and were labelled as Preference, Extra Involvement and Discrimination according to the nature of the items categorized in these themes.

Phase II: Empirical Validation

The objective of this phase was to establish the content validity of the items generated in the first phase.

Sample. Purposive sampling was used to select the experts for this phase. The experts were experienced clinical psychologists (n = 3) and university professors (n = 2) with a minimum five years of experience.

Procedure. To establish content validity of the items, the list of 39 items and definition of perceived favouritism was given to 5 experts. They were requested to rate each item on a 5-point rating scale; 1 (not at all), 2 (rarely), 3 (sometimes), 4 (often), to 5 (always) indicating how relevant each item was to the construct of perceived favouritism. They rated each item on 5-point Likert Scale (1-5). Percentages were calculated to identify items rated as consistency with the construct of perceived favouritism by the experts. After obtaining ratings from all the experts, a league table was developed, and only those items were retained that had at least 60% agreement among experts. Therefore, all items except one were retained.

Results. The content validity of the Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale (IPFC) was established. The list of items was then transformed into a scale with a 5-point rating scale; with response options of 1 (almost never), 2 (seldom), 3 (sometimes), 4 (often), to 5 (almost always). The minimum scores on the scale can be 38 which indicated minimum perceived favouritism and the maximum score on the scale was 190 and the higher the score, greater was the perceived favouritism.

Phase III: Tryout Phase

The third phase of the research involved a tryout of the entire study 1 protocol, to assess the suitability of layout, language, and whether the respondents encountered any difficulty.

Sample. The tryout was conducted on BS, BSc, and Master students of Government college University, Lahore. The students were selected through purposive sampling. The sample included 30 students (15 male, 15 female) with the age range of 18-24 years.

Procedure. The tryout was conducted by using research protocol and it was included two instruments: the Demographic Questionnaire and Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale. A tryout was conducted to make sure the comprehension of items of the scale and any ambiguity in understanding. This scale was individually administered to the participants. The participants were given brief instructions on how to respond to the questions. They were responded on all queries and questionnaires were administered. The questionnaires were gathered from the participants, and it was ensured that no respondent had left out any item unfilled. After that they were asked to give feedback regarding the scale and if any difficulty they encountered while filling it.

Results. The respondents reported they found it very interesting and appreciated, however, few participants found some items similar to few other items. Overall, the tryout showed that the participants did not face any major problem with comprehension of the scale. They were able to attempt the research protocol, and it took 7 minutes on average to complete it. After this phase, the Scale was finalized for further administration.

Phase IV: Main Study

The final phase of the study was aimed to administer the final research protocol to research participants. The purpose was to establish the psychometric properties of the Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale.

Sample. Students who were presently enrolled in BS, BSc, and Masters programs in university were included in the sample with the age range of 17 to 25 years (M = 20.68, SD = 2.05).

Thestudents who have failedthe same course three or more times were excluded. Students who were not currently enrolled in a BS, BSc, and Masters programs were excluded from the sample. Also, students who had participated in the first two phases of the research, that is, exploration of phenomenology and pilot study, were excluded from the Main Study.

Measures. The research protocol included the following instruments: The Demographic Questionnaire, Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale (Ehsaan & Naz, 2016), and What Is Happening In The Class (Chionh & Fisher, 1998).

Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale (IPFS). Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale was developed in present research for measuring perceived favouritism among university students. It measures the degree of perceived favouritism. It consists of 38 items which are rated on a 5-point scale Likert scale ranging from 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always). A high score on the IPFS indicates that the individual is experiencing favouritism in the class.

What Is Happening In This Class (WIHIC) Questionnaire (Chionh & Fisher, 1998). The WIHIC consisted of 56 items and seven subscales. In order to measure concurrent validity of the Perceived Favouritism Scale, the three subscales (1) Equity (e.g., “I get the same opportunity to contribute to class discussion as other students.”), (2) Teacher Support (e.g., “The teacher moves about the class to talk with me.”) and (3) Involvement (e.g., “I explain my ideas to other students”) of WIHIC were selected. These subscales were combined each subscale consisted of 8 items. Thus 24 items were combined and enlisted. All items were assessed on a 5-point Likert scale: 1 (almost Never), 2 (Seldom), 3 (Sometimes), 4 (Often), and 5 (Almost Always). The higher scores depict a high level of teachers’ support, classroom involvement and equity in class. Literature has given a range of 24 for minimum to 120 for maximum. The reliability coefficients for different WIHIC scales ranged from .58 to .83. The highest alpha reliability (.83) was obtained for the Equity scale. These alphas were essential for the current study because this scale was employed to determine concurrent validity of the newly developed IPFS.

Sample. A sample of 200 students was drawn (100 female, 100 male).

Procedure. The sample was approached through stratified random sampling in which sample was divided into four strata of BS (Hons) 4 years program. Fifty students from each year were selected through random sampling to get the total sample of 200 students. Participants were selected primarily by meeting the inclusion criteria, their availability, and willingness to participate in the research. The department head was informed of the purpose of the research and permission was obtained for administration of research questionnaires. These scales were administered in groups of the participants. The participants were given brief instructions and cleared up all queries they had and started filling out the questionnaires. It was ensured that no respondent had left out any item unfilled. After the respondents had completed the questionnaires, they were asked to give feedback regarding the scale and if any difficulty they encountered, while filling it. At the end, they were thanked.

Ethical considerations. Verbal and written informed consent was taken from relevant higher authorities and university students for the research. The participants were explained the purpose, duration, and nature of research. They were given instructions, and the right to withdraw and confidentiality was ensured. Their queries were clarified regarding filling the research questionnaires. In the end, debriefing was done. Data were stored in the password-protected laptop and only can be backed up according to the Pakistani Data Protection Law. The participants were thanked for their cooperation and contribution in this study.

RESULTS

To establish psychometric properties of the Scale factor analysis, internal consistency, item-total correlation, and concurrent validity were carried out.

Item-total correlation. Item-total correlation is used to test out if any of the items in the developed scale is incoherent with the rest of the items and can be discarded. The investigation is carried out to dispose off the worthless material from the scale. For this purpose item-total correlation analysis was used to make a conclusion whether or not items should be incorporated. The analysis revealed that all the items showed a high level of correlation with the total scores. It was noted that an alpha level was .80. The Item-total correlation was ranged from .54 to .78 and it means that the scale was not one-dimensional.

Factor Analysis. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy is greater than .90. This is a large value for the KMO measure suggesting that factor analysis of the variables is good and this is a suggestion that element or factor analysis will be constructive for these variables. Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant, and it was truly p<.001. This indicates there is a correlation between the items.

A scree plot is a plot of the Eigenvalues against the number of factors in order of extraction. The evidence of experiments suggests at the point where scree begins refers to the actual figure of factors (Lewith, Jonas, & Walach, 2010).

A scree plot shows two factors for IPFS but an eigen value ≥5 suggested three factors. After that between two and five factors analyses were used, and then developed three and four factors separately. Therefore, the total amount of variability of the original variables explained by each factor solution was observed. Four-factor solution explained so little variation and loading on the same factor that did not make sense together. Hence, three factors were kept on the scale with high factor loading. Those three factors were named the concept they represented which was indicative that the factor solution was a reasonable. The analysis concluded the three-factor solution that was retained, for a reason of its vivid depiction and proper distinction of the number of items.

Fig. 1: Scree Plot for factor analysis of Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale

Table 1:	Exploratory Factor Analysis With Varimax Rotation

Table 1 shows a factor analysis of 38 items into three factors ensued after exploratory analysis with varimax rotation is conducted. The analysis reflects that 36 items show high factor loading, that is above >.50 which were retained whereas merely two items with low factor loading were discarded in the process. Items in each factor are different in number as factor 1 contains 18 items, Factor 2 consists of 11 items and factor 3 included 7 items. Further details about the nature of the items are given below.

Factor 1: Preference. This factor of the scale is based on 18 items. The items of this subscale are including; for example, “In addition to the classrooms, teachers give more time to their favorite students in office as well”; “During exams, teachers allot more time to their favorite students and mark their tests leniently”; and “Teachers fancy the students with whom they have twofold terms, (for instance old students, relatives, close friends)”. A higher score on this subscale will refer higher level of perceived preference by students.

Factor 2: Extra Involvement. Factor 2 of this Scale consists of 11 items. Mainly the items of this subscale represents the extra involvement of teachers with their favorite students. That involvement is somehow on active level and beyond the classroom settings. The few items are included; for example, “teachers go for outing with their favorite students”; “teachers offer jobs”; “teachers take help in paper checking” “teachers help their favorite students in making assignments”. These items reflect extra involvement of teachers and a high score on this subscale will refer high level of perceiving extra involvement.

Factor 3: Discrimination. This factor of the Scale consists of 7 items. The majority of the items are representing discrimination among students. For example, “teachers discriminate good-looking students with the rest of class”; “exceptional attention for favorite students”; “praise them”; and “teacher disgrace other students and me apart from their favorite students”. High scores of this subscale refers to a high level of perceived discrimination.

Reliability Analysis
Cronbach’s alpha of the total score of Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale (IPFS) and its three subscales was calculated through reliability analysis.

Table 2:	Cronbach’s Alpha of Indigenous Perceived Favouritism ScaleNote. IPFS = Indigenous Percieved Favortisim Scale
Note. IPFS = Indigenous Percieved Favortisim Scale

Table 2 shows that the reliability of all three factors was in the range of .87 to .96, which is significantly high. The reliability of total score of Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale was .97 which is high which shows that the internal consistency and reliability of the scale are high.

Concurrent Validity
The concurrent validity was established through finding a correlation between the newly developed scale of Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale and What is Happening in the Class Scale (Fraser & Fisher, 1998) measuring Equity, Teacher’s support, and Classroom Involvement. The correlation coefficient found to be (r = .58, p < .01) which indicated that there was a positive and significant correlation between the two scales. Hence, concurrent validity was established against newly developed tool.

DISCUSSION

Favouritism is the unfair treatment of some individuals over others, and this is being practiced in the classrooms (Newberry & Davis, 2008). The purpose of the present study was to develop an indigenous instrument to measure the construct of perceived favouritism. Item-total correlation of the items revealed that all the items showed a high level of correlation with the total scores. The Item-total correlation was indicating that the corresponding item correlates very well with the Scale (Field, 2005). The factor analysis was used on the distinct items of Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale. Three main factors naming preference, extra involvement and discrimination were the results of factor analysis.

First factor Preference concerned to measure strong liking, a grant of favor, give an advantage to one over another, bestow a privilege upon, and an act of gracious kindness. Likewise, it was supported by the studies that teachers’ preferences show to have a vital part in students’ performance. Grade variations were found for the non-preferred group by teachers (Lu et al., 2015). A western study also supported it that the students who are heroes of their fellows but not preferred by their teachers not only had high ratings of negative behavior, but also had poor educational motivation and performance that was reflected in their low scores on teacher preference. Teachers’ preference seems to be a critical indicator of students’ academic performance (Chiu et al., 2013). Another recent study determined the effect of teachers’ favouritism on university students and came across students being affected in boldness, trust, and respect in their teacher-student relationship (Ali, Khan, & Hussain, 2018).

The factor 2 Extra Involvement is referring to a strong sense of concern for some students than others, enthusiasm, extra association, attachment and active level of favouritism that is beyond the class limit. This could be related to the study by Lansford et al. (2005) they reported that the deprivation of high-quality relation between students and teachers ensued in damaging effects including anxiety, poor health in general, poor grades, and depression. In the same, students who described to a greater extent teacher-student positive relationships, furthermore, described more feelings of belongingness, consequently experienced greater academic efficacy and less uneasiness (Roeser, Midgley, & Urdan, 1996). Likewise, one more study suggested that effectual relation between students and teachers recommends more self-confidence and better engagements in classroom similarly as responsive parenting promotes more feelings of safety and self-confidence (Lu, et. al., 2015). Another study conducted by Ali and colleagues concluded that students’ potential abilities, flair, and academic achievement need to emphasize rather than discriminating them due to personal interest (Ali et al., 2018).

The factor 3 discrimination included injustice, iniquity, partiality or deception. The support is given by a study (Sunderland, 2000) reporting that inspite of linguistics several students would be deprived of, as compared to some students gaining better knowledge and opportunities. On the other hand, Jensen (2009) describes several strategies consist of caring, encouragement and offering help when needed, and improving academics, emotional health, and social belongings in students. Favouritism happens when a teacher offers support to a specific individual unjustly and unlawfully or gives anybody or any group of people high evaluations in assignments and assessments. Likewise, it is favouritism when less competent students are revitalized and they procure more prominent grades than the individuals who do hard work in their academics (Okçu & Uçar, 2016).

The findings of factor analysis are linked to Western literature. The content of items was distinctive and based on the native view reflecting the perception of favouritism among native university students. The psychometric properties of the scale were developed by split-half reliability indicates a high level of reliability (Lu et al., 2015). A large coefficient alpha indicates high usefulness and quality of the test. The concurrent validity indicates an acceptable level of validity. These technical properties of a test are indicating the high consistency, and acceptability of a test measures a characteristic (Hinkin, 1995). With the aim to measure concurrent validity, three subscales of the WIHIC by Chionh and Fisher (1998) were used. The acceptable level of validity could perhaps due to few reasons one of them could be the scale which was used to measure concurrent validity was western tool thus cultural bias can occur. The need for developing a scale was justified that no scale was found measuring the same construct. In accordance with Ali and colleagues the education system of Pakistan is friendly and cooperative and hence sometimes students get privilege from teachers extra-ordinary. The newely developed scale is well justified with the indigenous study conducted (Ali et al., 2018).

LIMITATIONS

The sudden announcement of holidays in all universities of Lahore became an obstacle in collection the data for developing test-retest reliability of the developed indigenous perceived favouritism scale in the present study. The scale was administered and tested in government university students and private university students were neglected.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

A few suggestions are recommended to overcome some of the limitations of the present study and to enlarge the scope of this research. This study was carried out only on government university students. It would be very valuable to carry out comparable research for private and government universities. Additionally, also include college students to compare them with university students.

CONCLUSION

Favouritism is perceived in almost all the parts of life, whether it is in the school, college, university home or work. Teachers have more responsibility because students are first exposed to the academic environment and learn about sociality and fairness, empathy and justice. There was no such an instrument found to measure such an interesting phenomenon of perceived favouritism, and hence, the decision to develop a tool on perceived favouritism was made. Students were contacted and interviewed, and items were developed. Content validity was assured by expert validation. The scales were administered to establish psychometric properties like Cronbach’s alpha, split-half reliability, and concurrent validity after trying out phase. The factor analysis was used to draw factors, and three factors were proposed based on the eigenvalue, scree plot, and observation. After factor analysis, two items of the scale were discarded, and the scale of 36 items was finalized with three subscales.

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Indigenous Perceived Favouritism Scale (IPFS) Saba Ehsaan and Mahwesh Arooj Naz Clinical psychology Unit, Department of Psychology, Government College University Lahore, Pakistan Dear Students this scale comprises on statements regarding practices that happen in the class. You will have to answer how often each happens. There is no right and wrong answer. How well do you think each statement depicts what is happening in your class