Assessing team mindsets: Development and validation of a scale for team learning

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new scale to measure team mindsets, focusing on learning and collaboration within teams.

Contribution

The study develops and validates a new two-factor Team Mindset Scale for assessing team learning beliefs.

Findings

The Team Mindset Scale revealed a two-factor structure representing team growth and fixed mindsets.

The scale demonstrated strong psychometric properties and measurement invariance across genders.

Convergent and discriminant validity was confirmed by linking individual and team mindset constructs.

Abstract

Team mindsets are the collective beliefs of team members regarding their ability to enhance each other’s capacity by sharing knowledge, learning from failures, and collaboratively addressing challenges. This study developed and validated the Team Mindset Scale (TMS) to measure individuals’ perceptions of teamwork in relation to learning. The initial study revealed that the developed 48-team mindset items represented a two-factor structure encompassing team growth and fixed mindsets. We conducted an exploratory factor analysis on government survey data from 91 employees and identified two factors representing team mindsets. We verified the factor structure again and examined the psychometric properties of the items using a larger sample of 908 college students who participated in team projects. In the second study, we tested the two-factor structure of team mindsets and the participants’ response biases. In the third study, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis models to cross-validate the two-factor model and investigated measurement invariance across genders. Furthermore, we assessed the convergent and discriminant validity of team mindset constructs by evaluating the relationship between Dweck’s individual mindsets and the newly identified team mindsets. The scale we developed can enhance future research on team mindsets and offer valuable insights for practitioners and educators.

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