AIMSS Mobbing Scale

Abstract

The AIMSS Mobbing Scale (AIMSS M Scale) is a specialized psychometric instrument developed by Sümer et al. (2024) to evaluate the incidence, nature, and intensity of workplace mobbing—defined as systematic, nonsexual, hostile, and unethical communication directed by one or more individuals toward an employee over an extended period. Created as part of the broader tripartite Workplace Mistreatment Project (AIMSS) alongside parallel measures for incivility and abusive supervision, the scale addresses the need for culturally contextualized yet internationally rigorous psychometric tools capable of isolating mobbing from adjacent forms of counterproductive interpersonal behavior. The scale comprises 18 self-report items administered with a 5-point Likert frequency response format spanning from 1 (Never) to 5 (Almost every day) referencing behaviors experienced over the preceding 12 months.

Psychometric evaluation in large cohorts of employed adults demonstrates exceptional internal consistency, yielding a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.96 in validation samples. Structural analyses utilizing both principal component analysis and robust confirmatory factor analysis support an essentially unidimensional overarching factor accounting for 53.4% of the total variance, with standardized factor loadings ranging from 0.56 to 0.84. Confirmatory factor analytic indices substantiated an acceptable model fit (Satorra-Bentler $\chi^2(135) = 290.587$, $p < 0.001$; $\chi^2/\text{df} = 2.15$; $\text{CFI} = 0.885$; $\text{TLI} = 0.870$; $\text{RMSEA} = 0.050$, 90% CI [0.042, 0.058]; $\text{SRMR} = 0.060$). Construct validity was confirmed via convergence with established peer-victimization inventories, distinctiveness from lower-intensity incivility and hierarchical abusive supervision, and pronounced criterion-related associations with occupational burnout, emotional exhaustion, organizational cynicism, and diminished organizational commitment. The AIMSS Mobbing Scale serves as an empirical instrument for organizational psychologists, occupational health professionals, and workplace researchers.

Keywords

workplace mobbing, workplace mistreatment, psychological harassment, hostile work environment, psychometrics, scale validation, counterproductive work behavior, occupational stress, burnout, organizational commitment

Authors

The AIMSS Mobbing Scale was developed and validated by a collaborative research team of industrial and organizational psychologists across multiple universities in Turkey:

• H. Canan Sümer, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Özyeğin University, İstanbul, Turkey. Corresponding author. (Email: [email protected]).
• Aslı Göncü-Köse, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Çankaya University, Ankara, Turkey.
• Yonca Toker-Gültaş, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. (ORCID: Author Profile).
• F. Pınar Acar, Ph.D. — Department of Business Administration, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.
• Derya Karanfil, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, İzmir Bakırçay University, İzmir, Turkey.
• A. Başak Ok, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey.

Purpose

Workplace mistreatment manifests along a wide spectrum of interpersonal deviance, ranging from low-intensity, ambiguous acts of rudeness to severe, targeted, and persistent psychological warfare. The primary purpose of the AIMSS Mobbing Scale is to provide a psychometrically sound, operationally clear measurement tool dedicated specifically to assessing workplace mobbing. While the organizational literature contains several instruments measuring general workplace bullying—most notably the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R)—researchers have frequently noted conceptual contamination and operational overlap among related constructs such as workplace incivility, supervisor abuse, and horizontal harassment. The AIMSS initiative sought to systematically delineate these phenomena by developing three distinct yet coordinated scales (the tripartite AIMSS battery: Incivility, Mobbing, and Abusive Supervision).

The scale was engineered to capture systematic, hostile, and unethical nonsexual behaviors that an employee experiences repeatedly from colleagues, subordinates, or organizational leaders over a meaningful timeframe (the past year). In research contexts, the scale addresses gaps surrounding construct proliferation by establishing clear boundaries: whereas incivility involves low-intensity behaviors with ambiguous intent to harm, and abusive supervision focuses strictly on downward vertical abuse from direct hierarchical superiors, the AIMSS Mobbing Scale measures high-intensity, systematic interpersonal aggression that directly threatens the victim’s occupational standing, professional competence, communication access, social inclusion, and psychological safety.

In applied organizational development and occupational health diagnostics, the scale provides human resource managers, workplace investigators, and clinical consultants with an empirical method to quantify the prevalence of destructive group dynamics and institutionalized harassment. By measuring behaviors such as unfair performance downgrading, deliberate isolation, exclusion from corporate resources, and attacks on personal reputation, the instrument enables organizations to identify toxic department climates before they culminate in litigation, catastrophic productivity losses, severe psychiatric injuries, or voluntary turnover.

Psychological Construct

The construct measured by the AIMSS Mobbing Scale is workplace mobbing, conceptualized in organizational psychology and occupational ergonomics as a severe, escalated form of psychological victimization. First rigorously imported into adult work environments by Swedish psychologist Heinz Leymann, mobbing refers to hostile and unethical communication systematically directed by one or several individuals mainly toward one individual, pushing that person into a helpless and defenseless position and holding them there through recurring adverse interactions.

The AIMSS Mobbing Scale measures this construct across its primary operational behavioral manifestations:

• Attacks on Professional Competence and Occupational Reputation: Behaviors engineered to disparage the individual’s professional identity, discredit their expertise, and undermine their credibility. This includes seeking out mistakes excessively (Item 1), underestimating work quality (Item 4), devaluing ideas in collective forums (Item 5), and arbitrarily downgrading formal performance evaluations below deserved levels (Item 8).
• Destabilization of Work Conditions and Structural Manipulation: Instrumental actions that exploit organizational policies, workload distribution, and administrative leverage to generate distress. This dimension includes subjecting employees to double standards (Item 9), imposing disproportionate workloads compared to peers (Item 16), assigning tasks humiliatingly beneath the employee’s objective qualifications (Item 17), and arbitrarily altering working conditions, shifts, or hours (Item 18).
• Interpersonal Exclusion and Communication Isolation: Relational hostility targeting the victim’s social embeddedness within the work group. Manifestations include physically or operationally preventing communication with colleagues (Item 6), deliberate exclusion from formal and informal workplace social circles (Item 12), and denying access to essential corporate tools, equipment, or information networks (Item 15).
• Direct Intimidation, Personal Harassment, and Existential Threat: Aggressive, overt transgressions targeting psychological dignity and career tenure. Behaviors include intimidation through aggressive conduct (Item 2), reputational degradation (Item 3), public ridicule and mockery (Item 11), insults regarding personal life, personality, or lifestyle preferences (Item 13), coercive comparisons to colleagues (Item 7), overt or covert pressures to resign (Item 10), and explicit threats of dismissal or forced transfer to undesirable units (Item 14).

Although these behavioral domains represent distinct facets of mobbing, factor-analytic evidence confirms that they function as an interconnected behavioral syndrome, justifying an overall composite mobbing score.

Theoretical Framework

The construction and validation of the AIMSS Mobbing Scale are grounded in four primary theoretical frameworks within occupational stress, clinical psychopathology, and organizational behavior:

1. Leymann’s Typology of Workplace Mobbing

Leymann’s seminal conceptual model posits that mobbing is not merely an acute interpersonal dispute or a personality clash; it is an escalating social process where the target becomes systematically marginalized. Leymann identified five functional vectors of mobbing actions: effects on communication possibilities, maintenance of social contacts, personal reputation, occupational situation, and physical health. The AIMSS Mobbing Scale adapts this foundational typology into an empirically verifiable item pool, accounting for contemporary workplace dynamics such as digital workflow control, performance evaluation distortion, and arbitrary administrative rescheduling.

2. Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory

Hobfoll’s Conservation of Resources (COR) theory offers an explanatory paradigm for the psychological trauma caused by mobbing. COR theory asserts that individuals strive to acquire, retain, foster, and protect valued resources, including personal conditions (psychological safety, self-esteem), structural resources (corporate tools, adequate hours), and social resources (supportive colleague relations). Mobbing represents an aggressive, sustained resource loss cycle: targets expend immense emotional energy attempting to defend themselves, suffer direct structural deprivations (Item 15), and experience catastrophic resource depletion. Because resource loss is psychologically disproportionate to resource gain, sustained mobbing inevitably produces profound psychological strain, burnout, and behavioral withdrawal.

3. Affective Events Theory (AET)

According to Weiss and Cropanzano’s Affective Events Theory, discrete environmental work events trigger immediate emotional reactions, which accumulate over time to shape work attitudes (such as organizational commitment and job satisfaction) and affect-driven behaviors. The AIMSS Mobbing Scale measures recurring negative affective events (e.g., being mocked, insulted, or held to double standards). Under AET, the persistence of these negative episodes systematically supplants positive organizational experiences, producing persistent negative affective states (anger, anxiety, shame) that directly degrade organizational attachment and stimulate turnover intentions.

4. Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Model

Within the Job Demands-Resources framework, mobbing operates as a chronic, malignant job demand that simultaneously strips the individual of foundational job resources (autonomy, supervisor support, colleague solidarity, role clarity). The systematic imbalance between excessive emotional demands and depleted coping resources leads directly to energy depletion, cognitive weariness, and physical health impairment.

Validity

The AIMSS Mobbing Scale was subjected to psychometric validation during its development (Sümer et al., 2024), utilizing data from Turkish working adults recruited across diverse industries and organizational tiers. The validation strategy combined construct validity, convergent and discriminant validity, and criterion-related predictive modeling.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Convergent validity was established by correlating the AIMSS Mobbing Scale with established, internationally recognized counterpart measures of workplace bullying and mistreatment, such as the Negative Acts Questionnaire. The scale demonstrated strong, statistically significant positive correlations ($r > 0.70$) with corresponding peer-victimization constructs, confirming that it accurately reflects the broad domain of workplace aggression. Furthermore, item-total correlations across all 18 items were strong and positive, with values consistently exceeding the standard psychometric threshold of 0.50, demonstrating high construct coherence.

Discriminant Validity

To confirm that the AIMSS M Scale does not conflate distinct mistreatment constructs, Sümer et al. (2024) assessed its discriminant validity relative to their simultaneously developed Incivility and Abusive Supervision scales. While moderately to strongly correlated—as expected among constructs within the broader workplace mistreatment spectrum—multitrait analyses and nested confirmatory factor modeling demonstrated that a three-factor model separating Incivility, Mobbing, and Abusive Supervision fit the empirical data significantly better than alternative one- or two-factor constrained models ($\Delta\chi^2$ tests significant at $p < 0.001$). This confirms that the AIMSS Mobbing Scale specifically isolates severe, systematic harassment rather than general minor impoliteness or strictly vertical supervisor abuse.

Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity

Criterion-related validity was confirmed through structural equation modeling and regression analyses examining standard organizational strain indicators:

• Burnout: Scores on the AIMSS M Scale exhibited strong, positive predictive associations with employee burnout dimensions, particularly emotional exhaustion and depersonalization/cynicism.
• Organizational Commitment: Mobbing scores significantly and negatively predicted affective organizational commitment; as the frequency of mobbing experiences increased, employee identification with and loyalty toward the employing organization decreased substantially.
• Turnover Intentions: The scale showed robust positive predictive power regarding intentions to quit, reinforcing its practical utility as an early indicator of employee attrition.

Reliability

The AIMSS Mobbing Scale exhibits high internal consistency. In the scale development and validation sample reported by Sümer et al. (2024), the initial working adult sample yielded an overall internal consistency reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) of:

$$\alpha = 0.96$$

This high coefficient reflects item homogeneity and confirms that the 18 items reliably capture a single, unified behavioral spectrum of mobbing experiences. Split-half reliability and composite reliability coefficients ($\omega$) similarly exceed the conventional 0.80 benchmark recommended for individual assessment, indicating low measurement error across the latent continuum. Standardized item loadings further confirm that every item contributes significantly to the core construct without evidence of item redundancy or problematic attenuation.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the AIMSS Mobbing Scale was investigated through sequential exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic procedures.

Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

During the initial scale reduction phase, exploratory principal component analysis was performed on the preliminary item pool. Eigenvalue inspection and scree plot examination revealed a dominant primary factor that accounted for 53.4% of the total variance. Factor loadings on this primary dimension were consistently high, ranging between 0.56 and 0.84 across all items. This dominant single factor indicated that while mobbing manifests in various interpersonal and administrative behaviors (e.g., social isolation, performance manipulation, overt insults), these acts co-occur as part of a single, coherent pattern of victimization.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To validate the unidimensional factor structure, Sümer et al. (2024) conducted robust confirmatory factor analysis utilizing the Satorra-Bentler (SB) scaled chi-square estimation method to account for multivariate non-normality typical of low-frequency, high-severity behavioral events. The single-factor model specification yielded the following fit indices:

• Satorra-Bentler $\chi^2$: $\text{SB } \chi^2(135) = 290.587$, $p < 0.001$
• Normed Chi-Square: $\chi^2 / \text{df} = 2.15$ (well below the conservative threshold of 3.0, indicating good fit)
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $0.885$
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $0.870$
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $0.050$ (90% Confidence Interval: $[0.042, 0.058]$, $p_{\text{close}} = 0.465$)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $0.060$

The standardized factor loadings in the confirmatory model were strong, ranging from 0.60 to 0.83, confirming that each item serves as an effective indicator of the latent mobbing construct. Although the incremental fit indices (CFI and TLI) fell slightly below the 0.90 benchmark—a common occurrence in complex behavioral frequency scales with high item counts and varying base-rate distributions—the absolute fit indices (RMSEA and SRMR) demonstrated good structural fit.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The complete specifications of the AIMSS Mobbing Scale are summarized below:

• Test Type: Original psychometric rating scale; self-report inventory.
• Construct Assessed: Nonsexual, systematic workplace mistreatment / mobbing.
• Number of Items: 18 behavioral items.
• Target Population: Working adults (aged 18 years and older) across any employment sector, occupational level, or organizational setting.
• Recall Timeframe: Experiences encountered during the past year (12-month window).
• Administration Format: Standardized electronic survey administration, computer-assisted self-interviewing (CASI), or paper-and-pencil questionnaire.
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert frequency scale:
  • 1 = Never
  • 2 = Rarely
  • 3 = Sometimes
  • 4 = Often
  • 5 = Almost every day
• Scoring Protocol: An overall mobbing score is computed by calculating the arithmetic mean of all 18 items (ranging from 1.00 to 5.00), where higher scores indicate greater frequency and severity of mobbing victimization. Alternatively, a total sum score can be computed (ranging from 18 to 90). In line with broader bullying research conventions, researchers may also categorize respondents into exposure tiers (e.g., non-victims, occasional targets, systematic victims) based on threshold criteria (such as experiencing at least one or two negative acts weekly or daily over a 6- to 12-month period).
• Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The AIMSS Mobbing Scale was published in 2024. The instrument is described in the following original source publication: The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, Volume 158, Issue 6, pages 428–457 (https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.2024.2321881).

Licensing and Academic Use: The scale was developed for academic and scientific inquiry. Non-commercial researchers and educators may use the instrument for research and educational purposes, provided full citation and attribution are given to the original authors (Sümer et al., 2024). Commercial applications, including proprietary corporate climate audits, executive coaching tools, or fee-based employee wellness assessments, require explicit written permission from the corresponding author, Prof. Dr. H. Canan Sümer ([email protected]), and the respective copyright holders.

References

• Einarsen, S., Hoel, H., & Notelaers, G. (2009). Measuring exposure to bullying and harassment at work: Validity, factor structure and psychometric properties of the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised. Work & Stress, 23(1), 24–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/02678370902815673
• Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist, 44(3), 513–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.44.3.513
• Leymann, H. (1996). The content and development of mobbing at work. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 5(2), 165–184. https://doi.org/10.1080/13594329608414853
• Sümer, H. C., Göncü-Köse, A., Toker-Gültaş, Y., Acar, F. P., Karanfil, D., & Ok, A. B. (2024). Incivility, mobbing, and abusive supervision: A tripartite scale development study. The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 158(6), 428–457. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.2024.2321881
• Weiss, H. M., & Cropanzano, R. (1996). Affective events theory: A theoretical discussion of the structure, causes and consequences of affective experiences at work. Research in Organizational Behavior, 18, 1–74.
• Zapf, D. (1999). Organisational, work group related and personal causes of mobbing/bullying at work. International Journal of Manpower, 20(1/2), 70–85. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437729910268669

Items of the Scale