Development and Validation of an Administrative Characteristics Model of Public Vocational College Administrators in Guangdong Province

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an Administrative Characteristics Model for public vocational college administrators in Guangdong Province within the context of High Plan and the provincial vocational-education modernisation agenda. A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design was adopted, combining a 500-respondent survey of administrators selected through stratified random sampling with proportional allocation by institutional size from 70 public vocational colleges, with in-depth interviews of nine senior expert administrators drawn from seven colleges across the Pearl River Delta       and western Guangdong regions. A 120-item self-report questionnaire was developed based on seven theoretical constructs and refined through expert content validation and a pilot test. Exploratory Factor Analysis using Principal Component Analysis with Varimax retained 91 items based on the following criteria: h² ≥ 0.40, primary loading ≥ 0.50, and primary-to-secondary margin ≥ 0.10, and produced a seven-factor solution (KMO = 0.950; Bartlett χ² = 31,490.296, df = 4,095, p < 0.001) that explained 58.89 % of the cumulative variance with a balanced rotated-variance profile from 7.91 % to 8.97 %. The seven factors are Strategic Leadership, Industry-Education Collaboration, Team Development and Support, Policy Implementation and Execution, Resource Planning and Allocation, Coordination and Communication,             and Innovation and Continuous Improvement, with internal-consistency reliability estimates from α = 0.930 to α = 0.947 and an overall scale alpha of 0.970. Three-stage qualitative coding (open, axial, selective) of 63 expert interview segments confirmed the factor content with inter-coder agreement above 85 percent and produced 28 themes organized under       the seven empirical factors. The validated model offers an empirically grounded, provincially situated framework for administrator selection, structured professional development, annual performance review, and policy design in public vocational colleges in Guangdong Province, and provides a transferable methodological template for vocational governance research in other Chinese provinces and applied-education systems beyond the Chinese context.