AIMSS Workplace Incivility Scale

Abstract

The AIMSS Workplace Incivility Scale (AIMSS WI Scale) is a contemporary psychometric instrument developed by Sümer et al. (2024) to evaluate low-intensity deviant behaviors characterized by ambiguous intent to harm the target, occurring in direct violation of workplace norms for mutual respect. Stemming from a comprehensive tripartite research initiative designed to systematically differentiate and measure workplace incivility, mobbing, and abusive supervision, the scale captures subtle interpersonal transgressions perpetrated by coworkers, supervisors, or subordinates. The instrument is available in a comprehensive 24-item full version and a psychometrically streamlined 15-item short form. Respondents rate the frequency of their exposure to uncivil behaviors over the preceding 12 months using an anchored 5-point frequency scale ranging from 1 (Never) to 5 (Always). Across iterative scale development phases involving qualitative focus groups, thematic coding, exploratory pilot testing, and rigorous confirmatory testing among diverse samples of working adults, the AIMSS WI Scale demonstrated exceptional psychometric properties. Internal consistency reliability is markedly high, yielding a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .96 for the full 24-item scale and .93 for the 15-item short form. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) substantiated an overarching single-factor structure accounting for 52.47% of the variance, while item analysis supports empirical sub-dimensions reflecting exclusion and marginalization, devaluation of professional competence, disrespectful verbal and nonverbal communication, and invasion of interpersonal privacy and boundaries. The scale exhibits robust convergent validity with established counterproductive work behavior metrics and strong criterion-related validity, demonstrating significant predictive power for employee burnout, psychological distress, and diminished organizational commitment.

Keywords

workplace incivility, workplace mistreatment, interpersonal deviance, counterproductive work behavior, psychometrics, abusive supervision, mobbing, employee well-being, organizational commitment, scale validation

Authors

The AIMSS Workplace Incivility Scale was conceptualized, operationalized, and psychometrically validated by a collaborative consortium of organizational psychologists from leading academic institutions in Turkey:

• H. Canan Sümer, Ph.D. – Department of Psychology, Özye& kinship University, İstanbul, Turkey. 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 (METU), Ankara, Turkey. ORCID: https://orcid.org
• F. Pınar Acar, Ph.D. – Department of Business Administration, Middle East Technical University (METU), 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

The primary purpose of the AIMSS Workplace Incivility Scale is to provide a reliable, ecologically valid, and theoretically sound diagnostic instrument for quantifying the frequency and nuances of low-intensity workplace mistreatment. While overt forms of aggression, physical violence, and unlawful sexual harassment have long garnered legal and institutional intervention, subtle interpersonal mistreatment often operates beneath formal organizational thresholds, systematically eroding employee psychological health, organizational climate, and task performance over prolonged periods (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). The AIMSS WI Scale was engineered to resolve critical psychometric and conceptual ambiguities pervasive in existing measures of mistreatment, particularly the confounding overlap between general incivility, systematic workplace bullying (mobbing), and hierarchical abusive supervision.

From an applied organizational perspective, the instrument serves both diagnostic and intervention-oriented functions. In clinical and occupational health settings, organizational consultants and occupational health psychologists utilize the scale to conduct organizational climate audits, pinpoint toxic workplace pockets, assess psychosocial risk factors, and construct targeted civility interventions (such as Civility, Respect, and Engagement in the Workplace [CREW] initiatives). Because incivility often serves as the entry point or catalyst for an escalating “incivility spiral” that degenerates into overt hostility and legal liability, early detection using sensitive measurement tools is essential for preventative human resource management.

From a research perspective, the AIMSS WI Scale addresses the necessity for a psychometrically pristine measure that operationalizes incivility from an omnidirectional source perspective. Many historical instruments have focused exclusively on supervisor-enacted mistreatment or restricted inquiries to peer interactions. The AIMSS WI Scale explicitly frames behavioral prompts around interactions with coworkers, supervisors, and subordinates alike, capturing the systemic, networked nature of modern occupational stressors. By delineating clear empirical boundaries between low-intensity discourtesy and severe psychological terrorization, the instrument enhances the precision of structural equation models exploring the antecedents, mediators, and downstream consequences of organizational deviance.

Psychological Construct

The central psychological construct operationalized by the instrument is workplace incivility, formally conceptualized as low-intensity deviant workplace behavior with an ambiguous intent to harm the target, manifested in clear violation of workplace norms for mutual respect (Andersson & Pearson, 1999; Sümer et al., 2024). The construct is defined by three hallmark characteristics: low severity, ambiguity of intent, and violation of normative organizational codes. Unlike physical assault or formal discrimination, incivility encompasses subtle, often deniable behaviors such as condescending tones, dismissive body language, intentional exclusion, and passive-aggressive responsiveness.

Although the AIMSS WI Scale demonstrates an overarching single-factor saturation reflecting global incivility exposure, thematic qualitative analyses and multidimensional factor extractions delineate four interrelated functional sub-dimensions:

1. Exclusion and Marginalization

This dimension encompasses covert interpersonal behaviors designed to isolate the target psychologically and socially from the organizational fabric. Rather than active verbal confrontation, exclusion manifests through silent omissions, such as failing to invite the employee to relevant professional gatherings, ignoring greetings upon entering shared offices, deliberately avoiding eye contact during team assemblies, and shutting individuals out of organic workplace discussions. Such ostracism threatens fundamental psychological needs for belongingness, control, and meaningful existence.

2. Devaluation of Contributions and Competence

This facet assesses behaviors that subtly undermine an employee’s professional credibility, self-efficacy, and workplace standing. Manifestations include downplaying legitimate insights, failing to give credit for collaborative achievements, assigning demeaning tasks that fall outside legitimate professional parameters without justification, unfair scapegoating, and publicly challenging an individual’s judgment in a derogatory or unconstructive manner. These behaviors inflict cumulative damage upon the target’s organizational self-esteem and professional identity.

3. Disrespectful Verbal and Nonverbal Communication

This sub-dimension addresses direct violations of communicative etiquette and interpersonal decorum. Behaviors range from abrasive verbal styles—such as interrupting while someone is speaking, addressing colleagues in a patronizing or imperative tone, shouting, or using sarcastic and mocking remarks—to dismissive nonverbal displays, including eye-rolling, heavy sighing, and displaying conspicuous inattention during professional discourse. This dimension captures the visceral friction of everyday rude interactions.

4. Invasion of Privacy and Interpersonal Boundaries

This dimension measures violations of spatial, temporal, and personal boundaries. It includes intrusive inquiries into an employee’s private personal affairs, handling personal belongings or occupying physical workspaces without consent, ignoring off-duty personal time by asserting unreasonable communicative demands, and indirect, veiled disparagement regarding a target’s personal background, team, or identity. By indexing these boundary transmutations, the AIMSS WI Scale extends traditional definitions of incivility into modern ergonomic and psychological territories.

Theoretical Framework

The AIMSS Workplace Incivility Scale is grounded in foundational socio-psychological, occupational stress, and organizational behavior paradigms that explicate how subtle interpersonal stressors degrade human functioning.

The Incivility Spiral Model

The foremost theoretical framework underpinning the instrument is Andersson and Pearson’s (1999) Incivility Spiral Model. This theory posits that workplace interactions are governed by implicit social contracts and norms of mutual respect. When an organizational actor commits an uncivil act, the ambiguous intent leaves the target uncertain regarding whether the slight was accidental, unthinking, or intentionally malicious. The cognitive appraisal of this ambiguity consumes significant cognitive resources. If the target perceives the behavior as intentional, negative emotional reactions (such as anger, humiliation, or dejection) ensue, frequently prompting reciprocal uncivil counter-responses. Over successive exchanges, this tit-for-tat escalation transforms low-intensity incivility into severe psychological harassment, mobbing, and outright counterproductive work behavior (CWB).

Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory

The scale’s criterion relationships with strain outcomes are understood through Stevan Hobfoll’s Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory (Hobfoll, 1989). COR theory asserts that individuals strive to acquire, retain, foster, and protect valuable physical, social, energetic, and psychological resources. Uncivil interactions act as chronic, insidious resource drains. Victims expend mental energy deciphering veiled insults, managing internal distress via emotional labor, and coping with damaged interpersonal alliances. Because resources are finite, sustained exposure to incivility without adequate organizational replenishment leads inexorably to psychological resource depletion, culminating in emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and occupational burnout.

Social Exchange Theory and Norm of Reciprocity

Grounded in Blau’s (1964) Social Exchange Theory, employment relationships are conceptualized as reciprocal social exchanges transcending mere economic contracts. When employees experience uncivil treatment from colleagues or organizational agents, they perceive a breach of psychological contract and a breakdown in organizational justice. In response to perceived socio-emotional mistreatment, employees adjust their behavioral inputs to re-establish cognitive balance, manifesting as diminished organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), reduced organizational affective commitment, withdrawal, absenteeism, and heightened turnover intentions.

Validity

The AIMSS Workplace Incivility Scale has undergone extensive empirical validation across multiple working-adult cohorts, adhering to contemporary psychometric standards outlined by the American Psychological Association.

Content and Construct Validity

Scale construction commenced with comprehensive qualitative focus groups and thematic content analyses conducted by Sümer et al. (2024), ensuring high ecological and content validity. Initial item pools were subjected to expert review to verify construct fidelity and minimize semantic redundancy. Subsequent pilot testing refined the item properties, eliminating items with extreme floor effects or cross-construct ambiguities with mobbing and abusive supervision.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

Convergent validity was established by comparing the AIMSS WI Scale against established psychometric measures of workplace mistreatment, notably Cortina et al.’s (2001) Workplace Incivility Scale (WIS). The AIMSS WI Scale demonstrated high positive correlations with the WIS (r > .75), validating that it measures the core nomological network of incivility. Discriminant validity was rigorously evaluated in the parent tripartite investigation, which showed that while incivility correlates moderately with mobbing and abusive supervision, confirmatory factor models specifying three distinct latent constructs yielded a significantly superior fit compared to single-factor or nested two-factor mistreatment models, confirming that incivility possesses unique empirical space distinct from severe psychological bullying or power-based supervision abuse.

Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity

The scale demonstrates remarkable criterion-related validity across several organizational outcomes:

• Occupational Burnout: Scores on the AIMSS WI Scale significantly and positively predict all dimensions of the Maslach Burnout Inventory, particularly emotional exhaustion (β = .42 to .51, p < .001) and depersonalization.
• Organizational Commitment: Incivility exposure demonstrated strong negative associations with affective organizational commitment (r = -.38 to -.46, p < .001), indicating that targets of incivility detach emotionally from their employing institutions.
• Turnover Intentions and Job Dissatisfaction: Multiple regression analyses established that the scale accounts for significant incremental variance in employee turnover intention and overall job dissatisfaction above and beyond demographic controls and baseline workload stressors.

Reliability

The AIMSS Workplace Incivility Scale displays outstanding reliability parameters across heterogeneous occupational sectors, organizational tiers, and professional domains.

Internal Consistency Reliability

Reliability analyses evaluated via Cronbach’s alpha (α) and McDonald’s omega (ω) indicate excellent internal consistency. For the full 24-item AIMSS WI Scale, empirical validation studies reported a Cronbach’s alpha of α = .96. The shortened 15-item form retained an exceptional internal consistency of α = .93. Item-total correlations across the entire scale systematically exceeded .50, with no individual item deletion yielding an increase in the composite reliability index.

Measurement Stability

In sub-sample test-retest assessments across longitudinal survey intervals spanning 4 to 6 weeks, the instrument exhibited robust temporal stability (r_tt > .82), demonstrating that while incivility frequency is sensitive to organizational environmental fluctuations, individual exposure ratings remain consistent over time in stable organizational environments.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the AIMSS Workplace Incivility Scale was comprehensively evaluated by Sümer et al. (2024) utilizing both Principal Component Analysis (PCA) / Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and robust Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Structure

Initial PCA conducted on the item pool revealed a dominant first eigenvalue that substantially exceeded subsequent eigenvalues, with the primary unrotated component explaining 52.47% of the total variance. Factor loadings across all 24 items ranged from .47 to .84, confirming strong structural communality and justifying the computation of an omnibus total score.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Fit Indices

To confirm structural integrity, Satorra-Bentler scaled maximum likelihood CFA was conducted on an independent validation sample of working adults. The single-factor measurement model exhibited excellent fit to the empirical data:

• Satorra-Bentler χ² (df = 252): 592.642, p < .001
• Normed Chi-Square (χ²/df): 2.35 (well within the recommended threshold of < 3.0)
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .903
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .893
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .052 (90% Confidence Interval: [.047, .058], p_close = .257)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .050

Completely standardized factor loadings for the 24 items in the CFA model ranged from .46 to .85 (all p < .001), indicating robust indicator reliability and confirming that the items reliably measure the overarching construct of workplace incivility.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Standardized self-report rating scale / Psychosocial risk assessment instrument
• Primary Construct: Workplace Incivility / Workplace Mistreatment
• Administration Method: Electronic survey, paper-and-pencil questionnaire, or computerized organizational diagnostic assessment
• Target Population: Working adults aged 18 years and older across all organizational industries and job classifications
• Item Count:
  • Full Scale: 24 items
  • Short Form: 15 items
• Response Scale: 5-point frequency scale: 1 = Never, 2 = Rarely (once or a few times a year), 3 = Sometimes (once or a few times a month), 4 = Often (once or a few times a week), 5 = Always (almost every day)
• Item Stem / Prompt: Behavioral experiences over the past year initiated by colleagues, supervisors, or subordinates
• Scoring Formula & Rules:
  • There are no reverse-scored items; all items represent negative, uncivil interpersonal behaviors.
  • Overall Scale Score: Calculated by computing the arithmetic mean across all 24 items (or 15 items for the short form), yielding a continuous composite score ranging from 1.00 to 5.00. Higher mean scores indicate greater exposure to workplace incivility.
  • Subscale Mean Scores: Can be computed by averaging items within specific empirical dimensions (Exclusion/Marginalization, Devaluation of Contributions/Competence, Disrespectful Communication, and Invasion of Privacy/Boundaries) for granular diagnostic profiling.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The AIMSS Workplace Incivility Scale was published in 2024. The scale was established as part of academic psychological research funded by scientific research grants and authored by H. Canan Sümer, Aslı Göncü-Köse, Yonca Toker-Gültaş, F. Pınar Acar, Derya Karanfil, and A. Başak Ok. The instrument is accessible without monetary fee for academic, non-commercial research, and non-profit educational purposes, provided that proper scholarly citation to the original authors and primary validation publication (Sümer et al., 2024) is fully maintained. Organizations, commercial consulting firms, or platforms intending to integrate the instrument into fee-bearing assessment software, corporate diagnostics, or for-profit commercial interventions should direct inquiries regarding formal licensing and permission to the corresponding author, Prof. Dr. H. Canan Sümer, at Özye& kinship University ([email protected]).

References

Andersson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for tat? The spiraling effect of incivility in the workplace. Academy of Management Review, 24(3), 452–471. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1999.2202131

Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. John Wiley & Sons.

Cortina, L. M., Magley, V. J., Williams, J. H., & Langhout, R. D. (2001). Incivility in the workplace: Incidence and impact. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 6(1), 64–80. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.6.1.64

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

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

Items of the Scale