Further Evidence for Criterion Validity and Measurement Invariance of the Luxembourg Workplace Mobbing Scale

Workplace mobbing has various negative consequences for targeted individuals and are costly to organizations. At present it is debated whether gender, age, or occupation are potential risk factors. However, empirical data remain inconclusive as measures of workplace mobbing so far lack of measurement invariance (MI) testing – a prerequisite for meaningful manifest between-group comparisons. To close this research gap, the present study sought to further elucidate MI of the recently developed brief Luxembourg Workplace Mobbing Scale (LWMS; Steffgen, Sischka, Schmidt, Kohl, & Happ, 2016) across gender, age, and occupational groups and to test whether these factors represent important risk factors of workplace mobbing. Furthermore, we sought to expand data on criterion validity of the LWMS with different self-report criterion measures such as psychological health (e.g., work-related burnout, suicidal thoughts), physiological health problems, organizational behavior (i.e., subjective work performance, turnover intention, and absenteeism), and with a self-labeling mobbing index. Data were collected via computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) in a representative sample of 1,480 employees working in Luxembourg (aged from 16 to 66; 45.7% female). Confirmatory factor analyses revealed scalar MI across gender and occupation as well as partial scalar invariance across age groups. None of these factors impacted on the level of workplace mobbing. Correlation and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses strongly support the criterion validity of the LWMS. Due to its briefness while at the same time being robust against language, age, gender, and occupational group factors and exhibiting meaningful criterion validity, the LWMS is particularly attractive for large-scale surveys as well as for single-case assessment and, thus, general percentile norms are reported in the Electronic Supplementary Materials.