The Structure of Work Engagement

Abstract

Abstract. The aim of this study was to validate the Lithuanian version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-17), developed by Schaufeli and Bakker (2003) , and the newly developed UWES-3 ( Schaufeli et al., 2019 ). The data were derived from a sample of Lithuanian employees that was surveyed longitudinally. At Time 1, a total of 475 employees were surveyed. At Time 2, 166 employees completed the survey for a second time. Confirmatory factor analyses provided more support for unidimensional solution of the UWES-17. Moreover, the internal consistency of both versions was sufficiently high (α varied between .76 and .90), and the test-retest reliability with an interval of 8 months was .70 and .69 for the long and the ultra-short version respectively. Furthermore, the one-factor structure of the UWES-17 and UWES-3 was invariant across job status and time. Finally, as expected, the correlation analysis showed work engagement to be positively related to job resources. Based on the Lithuanian employee sample, this study replicates previous findings on the dimensionality of work engagement as measured by the UWES and adds evidence on the validity of its scores. In this way, it contributes to international effort aimed at studying this construct and validating its measures.