Workplace Bullying

Abstract

The Workplace Bullying scale, developed by Lyn Quine in 2001, is a specialized psychological instrument designed to quantify the prevalence and nature of workplace bullying behaviors experienced by employees, particularly within healthcare settings. Comprising 20 items grouped into five distinct subscales, the instrument assesses various facets of bullying, including threats to professional status, personal standing, social isolation, excessive workload demands (overwork), and deliberate destabilization of the victim’s role. This scale is widely referenced in occupational health psychology research, especially concerning the impact of hostile work environments on staff well-being and retention.

The scale utilizes statistical measures such as means (M), standard deviations (SD), and internal consistency estimates (Cronbach’s alpha) to evaluate the severity and reliability of the reported bullying experiences across its dimensions. It serves as a crucial tool for researchers and organizations seeking to identify specific patterns of interpersonal aggression and inform intervention strategies.

Keywords

Workplace bullying, Occupational psychology, Psychological instrument, Organizational stress, Harassment, Threat to status, Staff questionnaire, Nursing, Cronbach’s alpha

Authors

Lyn Quine

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Workplace Bullying scale is to provide a standardized, psychometrically sound measure for assessing the frequency and types of aggressive behaviors directed toward an individual in their professional environment. It aims to move beyond simple definitions of bullying by dissecting the phenomenon into specific, measurable components related to professional undermining, personal attacks, and social exclusion.

By quantifying these distinct dimensions, the scale enables researchers to analyze which specific forms of bullying are most prevalent within certain organizational contexts, such as the nursing profession. This detailed measurement is essential for correlating specific bullying factors with adverse outcomes, such as psychological distress, job dissatisfaction, or intent to leave the organization.

Construct

The scale measures the overarching construct of Workplace Bullying, conceptualized as repeated, unreasonable actions directed towards an employee or a group of employees that are intended to intimidate, humiliate, degrade, or undermine, or that create a risk to the health or safety of the employee(s). Quine’s instrument operationalizes this construct through five distinct, correlated factors:

• Threat to Professional Status: Actions that diminish an individual’s work competence or professional authority.
• Threat to Personal Standing: Behaviors targeting personal integrity, including verbal abuse or physical threats.
• Isolation: Social exclusion or the deliberate withholding of essential resources or information.
• Overwork: The imposition of excessive or unreasonable workload demands and deadlines.
• Destabilization: Actions designed to confuse the victim or remove their sense of control and responsibility within their role.

Validity

While the source content does not explicitly detail comprehensive validity studies (such as convergent, discriminant, or criterion validity), the clear articulation of the five underlying factors strongly suggests reliance on construct validity, likely established through factor analytic methods (detailed below). The items are face-valid, directly reflecting behaviors commonly associated with definitions of workplace aggression.

The scale’s utility, as evidenced by its application in studies concerning healthcare staff, confirms its ecological validity within high-stress professional environments. Its structure allows for differentiation between various forms of aggression, suggesting that the subscales measure distinct, yet related, aspects of the bullying experience.

Reliability

The reliability of the Workplace Bullying scale is primarily assessed using Cronbach’s alpha, a measure of internal consistency, reported for each of the five subscales based on the original research sample. Generally, the scale demonstrates high to acceptable reliability across most factors:

• Threat to Professional Status: alpha = .93 (Excellent)
• Isolation: alpha = .94 (Excellent)
• Threat to Personal Standing: alpha = .78 (Acceptable)
• Destabilization: alpha = .77 (Acceptable)

A notable exception is the Overwork scale, which reported a low internal consistency (alpha = .26). Researchers employing this scale should exercise caution when interpreting results derived specifically from the Overwork subscale, as its low alpha suggests that the two items comprising this factor may not be measuring a single, consistent underlying dimension in the same manner as the other subscales.

Factor Analysis

The scale is structured based on a multi-dimensional factor model, consisting of five distinct factors identified through statistical analysis (likely Exploratory Factor Analysis, given the structure). This five-factor structure allows for a nuanced understanding of bullying, recognizing that workplace aggression is not monolithic but manifests through various behavioral domains.

The five factors—Threat to Professional Status, Threat to Personal Standing, Isolation, Overwork, and Destabilization—represent a comprehensive categorization of bullying behaviors. This factor structure provides strong empirical support for differentiating between behaviors that undermine competence versus those that target an individual’s personal or social standing within the organization.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report questionnaire/Psychometric scale

Format: Likert-type scale or frequency rating (Implied by Mean/SD data, typically requiring respondents to rate how often they experience each behavior)

Language Available: English (Primary publication language)

Population Group: Occupational/Working Adults

Age Group: Adults (No specific age range specified, relevant to employed individuals)

Population Details: Originally validated and utilized predominantly within the NHS (National Health Service) in the UK, specifically targeting nurses and healthcare professionals.

Test Methodology: Respondents are asked to indicate the frequency or extent to which they have experienced the 20 listed behaviors over a specified period. The scores for the items within each subscale are summed or averaged to create subscale scores, which are then used to assess the severity of the different forms of bullying experienced.

Keywords

Occupational health, Organizational behavior, Psychometrics, Self-report measure, Healthcare environment, Staff well-being, Aggression, Destabilization

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not specified in source materials.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not specified in source materials.

Correspondence Address: Correspondence details must be sought through the primary publications (Quine, 2001 or 1999).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 2001 (Based on primary publication defining the scale structure).

Permissions and Fees: Information regarding permissions for use and associated fees are not specified in the source. Researchers should consult the primary author or the publisher of the original journal articles (Journal of Health Psychology and BMJ) for licensing details.

Source Location: The instrument can be found on page 78 of the article “Workplace Bullying in Nurses.” The article is available online via PubMed Central. The original source article can be accessed here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27703/

Reference’s

• Quine‚ L. (2001). Workplace bullying in nurses. Journal of Health Psychology‚ 6(1)‚ 73-84.
• Quine‚ L. (1999). Workplace bullying in NHS community trust: Staff questionnaire survey. BMJ.com‚ 318‚ 228–232.

Items of the Workplace Bullying

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

Threat to professional status scale (M = 1.91; SD = 1.20; alpha = .93)

1. Persistent attempts to belittle and undermine your work
2. Persistent and unjustified criticism and monitoring of your work
3. Persistent attempts to humiliate you in front of colleagues
4. Intimidatory use of discipline or competence procedures

Threat to personal standing scale (M = 1.82; SD = .91; alpha = .78)

5. Undermining your personal integrity
6. Destructive sarcasm with you
7. Verbal threats to you
8. Making inappropriate jokes about you
9. Persistently teasing you
10. Physical violence to you
11. Violence to your property

Isolation scale (M = 1.77; SD = 1.24; alpha = .94) items:

12. Withholding necessary information from you
13. Freezing out/ignoring/excluding
14. Unreasonable refusal of applications for leave/training/promotion

Overwork scale (M = 2.25; SD = 1.13; alpha = .26) items:

15. Undue pressure to produce work
16. Setting of impossible deadlines

Destabilization scale (M = 1.71; SD = 1.01; alpha = .77) items:

17. Shifting goalposts without consulting you
18. Constant undervaluing of your efforts
19. Persistent attempts to demoralize you
20. Removal of areas of responsibility without consultation