1472 Development and validation of the job crafting scale for university students

Abstract

Introduction The interest of the project ‘Ready for Work’ is in educating students to enhance occupational well-being in order that they will transfer the learnt to their future work. Job crafting was chosen as one concept that students should master. The first act was to assess the students’ study related job crafting. For this the job crafting scale (Tims , et al 2012) required modifications. The aim of this paper is to present the job crafting scale modified for assessing the students’ job crafting and its validation results. Methods The modified scale consisted of 23 items, 8 items measuring dimension ´increasing structural job resources’, 6 measuring ‘increasing social job resources’, 4 measuring ‘increasing challenging demands’ and 6 measuring ‘decreasing hindering job demands’. 768 university students answered the questionnaire. The scale was tested by using reliability assessment and exploratory factory analysis. Results The four dimensions each had good reliability. Cronbach alfas ranged 0.78–0.91. The four factors explained 56,6% of the variance. However the structure of four dimensions was not well supported. The first factor (Eigenvalue 7) explaining 35% of the variance consisted of items measuring ‘increasing social job resources’. The second factor (Eigenvalue 2,4) explaining 10% of the variance was related to items of ‘increasing structural job resources’ as well as ‘increasing challenging job demands’. The third factor (Eigenvalue 1,5) explaining 6,5% of the variance consisted of items measuring ‘decreasing hindering job demands’. The fourth factor explaining 5% was related to a few items concerning the negotiation of the work to be done. Conclusion The correspondence between students’ work and employees’ work needs deeper theoretical consideration when developing the scale for students’ job crafting further. The scale items assessing job crafting factors ‘increasing structural resources’ and ‘increasing challenging job demands’ were related and this needs careful interpretation.