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This study describes the development and validation of two scales measuring job security: the Job Security Index (JSI), measuring an individual's cognitive appraisal of the future of his or her job with respect to the perceived level of stability and continuance of that job, and the Job Security Satisfaction (JSS) scale, measuring employee satisfaction with a perceived level of job security. Item response theory and classical test theory analyses indicate that the scales are highly reliable and exhibit good discriminant and criterion-related validity. Future researchers are advised to apply confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to the scales to confirm their factor structures.
A continuing problem in the field of job security research has been the lack of a comprehensive definition and measurement of job security. Many studies fail to define the construct and/or use one- or two-item indicators to measure job security. Commonly, participants are asked to indicate 'the likelihood of losing their job in the next year' or 'if they expect a change in their employment for the worse' (e.g. Buessing, 1986; Dooley, Rook, & Catalano, 1987; Roskies, Louis-Guerin, & Fournier, 1993). Other researchers partition their sample according to those in organizations with low job security and those in organizations with high job security, this being defined by the researcher (e.g. Buessing, 1986).
Greenhalgh and Rosenblatt (1984) were among the first researchers to provide a rigorous definition of the job insecurity construct as well as explicate some important organizational outcomes of the phenomenon. They defined job insecurity as 'perceived powerlessness to maintain desired continuity in a threatened job situation' (p. 438). Based on this definition, Ashford, Lee, and Bobko (1989) developed a 57-item measure known as the Job Insecurity Scale (JIS), which measured job insecurity by assessing: (1) the range of work situation features that could be in jeopardy, (2) the valence of each such feature, (3) the subjective probability of losing each feature, and (4) the number of sources of threat. Thus, job insecurity= [([Sigma] importance of job feature×likelihood of losing job feature)+([Sigma] importance of job loss×likelihood of job loss)]×perceived powerlessness to resist threat.
Although this measure has seen some use, there are several potential drawbacks to defining and measuring job insecurity as such. First, it is unclear how conceptually distinct perceptions of...