Speak-Up Check (S-U-C)

Abstract

The Speak-Up-Check (S-U-C) is a concise, psychometrically sound instrument designed to measure the construct of collective speak-up behavior within teams. Speak-up behavior, often used synonymously with voice behavior, is defined as proactive team action involving the constructive challenging of the status quo with the explicit intention of improvement, rather than mere criticism. The S-U-C demonstrates very good psychometric properties, including high internal consistency. Substantial correlations with related team constructs, such as psychological safety and interpersonal processes, provide strong evidence for its convergent construct validity and criterion validity. Furthermore, the instrument exhibits robust incremental validity in predicting critical organizational outcomes, such as team creativity, highlighting the scale’s importance for assessing team effectiveness.

Keywords

Collective Speak-Up Behavior, Voice Behavior, Teamwork, Proactive Behavior, Constructive Challenge, Organizational Psychology, Team Effectiveness, Team Creativity, Psychological Safety

Authors

Dr. Josef A. Fischer, Dr. Hendrik Hüttermann

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Speak-Up-Check (S-U-C) is to provide a rapid, reliable, and valid measure of collective speak-up behavior at the team level. This measurement is crucial for diagnosing team dynamics, particularly in environments where proactive initiative and constructive discourse are vital for success.

The scale is highly versatile and suitable for use in diverse team contexts, including student project groups, medical operational teams (OP-Teams), and industrial production teams. Its brevity (approximately one minute completion time) makes it especially useful for quick team diagnostics, workshops, and team meetings where efficiency is paramount.

Construct

The S-U-C measures Collective Speak-Up Behavior. This construct is rooted in the concept of Voice Behavior introduced by Van Dyne and LePine (1998), which describes unprompted and proactive behavior aimed at constructively questioning existing procedures or conditions with the goal of optimization.

Collective speak-up behavior specifically focuses on the average quality and frequency with which team members jointly challenge the status quo of their work. This collective action is essential for preventing the repetition of costly errors and for fostering an environment where valuable information and observations are shared, leading to improved outcomes such as team creativity and overall effectiveness.

Validity

The validity of the Speak-Up-Check is supported by evidence across convergent, criterion, and incremental validity domains.

• Convergent Validity: The S-U-C demonstrated substantial positive correlations with theoretically related constructs. The correlation with psychological safety (measured by the PsySafety-Check) was high (r = .63, p < .001). Since psychological safety is considered a central prerequisite for collective speak-up behavior, this strong correlation supports convergent validity. A positive correlation was also found with interpersonal processes (r = .49, p < .001), indicating that teams with better relational activities are more likely to engage in constructive dialogue.

• Criterion Validity: The S-U-C showed a significant positive correlation with team creativity (r = .56, p < .001). This confirms the expectation that teams exhibiting strong collective speak-up behavior, which involves critically questioning and evolving ideas, achieve higher levels of creative output.

• Incremental Validity: A stepwise multiple regression analysis demonstrated that the S-U-C explained an 8% incremental variance in predicting team creativity, beyond the variance accounted for by psychological safety and interpersonal processes (β = .38, p < .001). This outcome underscores the scale’s unique and relevant contribution to predicting group effectiveness criteria, even with only four items.

Reliability

The internal consistency of the Speak-Up-Check is rated as good. Reliability estimates were calculated using two standard measures:

• Cronbach’s Alpha: .83

• McDonald’s Omega: .83

These values confirm the scale’s reliability in measuring the one-dimensional construct of collective speak-up behavior.

Factor Analysis

Scale development procedures included both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses.

• Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA): Using Principal Axis Factoring with Promax oblique rotation, the EFA extracted a single factor with an eigenvalue greater than 1, accounting for 69% of the variance. Communalities for the four items ranged between .61 and .78.

• Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA): Analysis using Structural Equation Modeling (Maximum Likelihood estimation) yielded fit indices generally pointing to a very good model fit: CFI = .97, IFI = .97, TLI = .90, and SRMR = .037. The standardized factor loadings ranged from .62 to .90. While the RMSEA value was high at .15, this was interpreted as a sensitivity artifact due to the small number of manifest/latent variables and the relatively small sample size (N=210), consistent with findings from simulation studies (Heene et al., 2011). Considering the overall set of fit criteria, the model quality is deemed very good.

• Item Characteristics: Part-whole corrected item-total correlations (discriminatory power, or Trennschärfe) were all above the conventional threshold of .50, indicating that all four items contribute well to the measurement of the underlying construct.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-administered questionnaire (Team-level diagnostic screening)

Format: 4-item, 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree)

Language Available: German (Items and Documentation)

Population Group: Teams in organizational settings (e.g., development teams, operational teams, project groups)

Age Group: Adults (Working professionals)

Population Details: Validation sample consisted of 41 teams (N=210) from a German automotive company in 2011. The workforce was predominantly male (92% of invited participants). Team tenure varied:

• Less than 1 year: 22%
• Between 1 and 2 years: 39%
• Longer than 2 years: 31%
• No information: 8%

Test Methodology: The scale uses a referent-shift consensus model (Chan, 1998) conceptualization, requiring individuals to report on their perception of the collective behavior within the team (e.g., “The members of the team…”). The final score is calculated as an unweighted mean index of the four positively formulated items, requiring valid responses for at least three items for index calculation. The test can be administered via computerized self-administered questionnaire (CSAQ) or oral interview (e.g., in team coaching contexts). The administration time is approximately one minute.

Keywords

Organizational Behavior, Team Diagnostics, Voice Behavior, Psychometrics, Factor Analysis, Psychological safety, Incremental Validity, Total Quality Management, Agile Development

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source.

Affiliation Email addresses: Dr. Josef A. Fischer: [email protected]; Dr. Hendrik Hüttermann (University of St. Gallen, I.FPM-HSG): [email protected]

Correspondence Address: Dr. Josef A. Fischer; Dr. Hendrik Hüttermann, Universität St. Gallen, Institut für Führung und Personalmanagement (I.FPM-HSG).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The scale is described as “erprobt” (tested/validated). The data for scale validation were collected in 2011. Information regarding specific usage fees or detailed permissions is not provided in the source manuscript. The scale demonstrates excellent economy due to its short administration time (approximately 1 minute).

Reference’s

The scale development is based on the foundational work of Van Dyne and LePine (1998). Related research cited includes:

• Bortz and Döring (2006)

• Brislin (1970)

• Chamberlin and colleagues (2017)

• Chan (1998)

• Duan et al (2019)

• Edmondson (1999)

• Edmondson & Lei (2014)

• Eisenbeiss et al. (2008)

• Fischer (2020)

• Fischer & Hüttermann (2020) (PsySafety-Check)

• Heene et al. (2011)

• Kurtzberg & Amabile (2001)

• Liu et al (2017)

• MacKinnon et al. (2007)

• Marks and colleagues (2001)

• Morrison (2014)

• Morrison et al (2011)

• Schermelleh-Engel et al. (2003)

• Van Dyne and LePine (1998)

• Williams et al. (2009)

Items of the Speak-Up-Check (S-U-C)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Instruction: Ziel der Befragung ist es, Ihre Wahrnehmung der Zusammenarbeit in folgendem Team zu erfassen: Name des Teams. Bitte kreuzen Sie jeweils das Antwortfeld an, das am besten beschreibt, inwieweit Sie der jeweiligen Aussage zustimmen.

Response Anchors (5-point scale): (1) stimme überhaupt nicht zu; (2) stimme eher nicht zu; (3) teils/teils; (4) stimme eher zu; (5) stimme voll und ganz zu.