A Psychometric Assessment of the Minnesota innovation Survey

Abstract This chapter evaluates the measurement properties of an innovation questionnaire developed and being used as one of several measurement instruments to observe the development of a wide variety of innovations over time by the Minnesota innovation Research Program (MIRP). Evidence of the reliability and validity of the Minnesota innovation Survey (MIS) is provided by applying standard psychometric The authors are grateful for the cooperation of their colleagues who provided data from their innovation studies for this chapter, particularly John Bryson, Raghu Garud, Daniel Gilbert, Alfred Marcus, John Maurie!, Douglas Polley, Michael Rappa, Peter Ring, William Roering, Roger Schroeder, and Gary Scudder. This research was supported in part with a major grant to the Strategic Management Research Center to study the management of innovation from the Program on Organizational Effectiveness of the office of Naval Research under contract No. N000l4-84-K-0016. Additional support for the research program is being provided by ADC Telecommunications, Bemis, CENEX, Control Data, IBM, Dayton-Hudson, Dyco Petroleum, Farm Credit Services, First Bank System, Honeywell, and 3M Corporations and by the McKnight and Bush Foundations. procedures for evaluating tests and measurement instruments. Such a psychometric assessment is a necessary prerequisite to developing or testing substantive theories based on the MIS data, and provides important information about the strengths and weaknesses of the MIS instrument to other potential users who wish to use the survey to conduct research on the management of innovation.