Psychometric properties of a short version of the Job Anxiety Scale
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Abstract
Background: Occupational stress and specifically job anxiety are crucial factors in determining health outcomes,
job satisfaction as well as performance. In order to assess this phenomenon, the Job Anxiety Scale is one of the
instruments available. It consists of 70 items that are clustered in 14 subscales and five dimensions. The aim of this
paper is to create a more efficient, short version of the Job Anxiety Scale, while retaining the five dimensions, and
to assess its psychometric properties.
Methods: The sample consists of 991 – mostly psychosomatic – patients from two different clinics. We applied
methods of factor analysis and bivariate correlations to explore and test factor structure and the nomological net of
related constructs.
Results: After reducing the item pool via the construction of subsets and tests using ant-colony-optimization, a 15-
item version of the Job Anxiety Scale evinced very good psychometric properties. We found very good model fit,
high internal consistency, and invariance across participant age and sex. It displayed improved discriminant validity
compared to the original scale, and we found the expected pattern of convergent correlations.
Conclusions: With this short version of the Job Anxiety Scale, researchers can assess job related worries in a much
more economic manner. The questionnaire is particularly useful in large-scale surveys and/or in samples that
struggle with extensive assessments.
Keywords: Job anxiety scale, JAS, Job related anxiety, Screening instrument, Scale construction, Job assessment
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BMC medical research methodology, 20, BioMed Central, London, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-020-00974-4