Cross-cultural development of an abridged job insecurity measure

Using four samples from the United States and China, we developed two theoretically based abridged job insecurity (JI) scales to address researcher concerns with the length of the original 57-item scale. These two scales contained all the components of the scale originally developed and validated by Ashford et al., 1989. Our abridged scale has 37 items (18 items for job features, 16 items for total job, and 3 items for powerlessness). We further developed a bare-bones scale with only 25 items (10 items for job features, 12 items for total job, and 3 items for powerlessness). Results show that the content and construct validities of both the abridged and the bare-bones scales are highly similar to the original JI scale. Our results provide support for the use of either the abridged or the bare-bones JI scales.