Gauging Organizational Health -- A Questionnaire Study in a Government Laboratory

One way of measuring an organization's health is to discover what its images are in the minds of the publics with which it is most concerned, particularly employees. This was the frame of reference for some recent attempts to measure organizational health at the U. S. Naval Ordnance Test Station, China Lake, Calif. The organizational Self-Inventory was administered to approximately 500 scientists, engineers, administrators, clerical and crafts personnel in five of the Station's departments. The research instrument used to make the measurements was a simple questionnaire composed of three types of items: incomplete sentences; cartoon incomplete sentences, and semantic scales.