A validation of the short-term international teaching assignments scale

Many researchers highlighted the need to develop organizational guidelines to enable the effective support and maintenance of critical human resources during expatriate sojourns. However, lack of instruments that measure perceived support for fly-in, fly-out academics has been a shortcoming in past research. In this study, the development of the Short-term International Teaching Assignments Scale (STITAS) is described. The STITAS was composed of 13 items aimed to measure four factors of perceived support: organisational support, HR support, financial support and career support. The STITAS was piloted with 193 fly-in, fly-out academics from 24 Australian universities that participated actively in transnational education. Data analyses involved Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Cronbach's alpha of the STITA was found to be 0.85, and the construct validity with the fourfactor structure was confirmed with GFI = 0.917.