Psychosocial risk assessment: Measurement invariance of the UK Health and Safety Executive's Management Standards Indicator Tool across public and private sector organizations

Abstract

This study provides evidence to support the validity of the UK Health and Safety Executive Management Standards Indicator Tool, which is widely used in the UK by organizations to test for stress-related working conditions. A large pooled data set was collected from 137 UK organizations (N=67,347) to test the factor structure of both the original 35-item seven-factor instrument and a new shorter 25-item version. The results showed that the tool was a good fit to the data for both versions. Further analysis examined the factor structure of the Indicator Tool by splitting the data set into both public and private sector organizations. Tests for measurement invariance showed that both versions of the Indicator Tool provided a good fit to the data. The final sequence of analysis showed that the measurement structure of both the 25-item and 35-item scales was also invariant across small-, medium- and large-sized organizations. The current study provides percentile tables for both the public and private sectors so that organizations can compare their scores against UK national benchmarks. Overall, this study validates both the full and the short versions of a valuable and reliable diagnostic instrument for use in a variety of organizations.