Organizational Commitment Scale (ISSP)

Abstract

The Organizational Commitment Scale (ISSP OC) is an ultra-brief, three-item psychometric instrument originally introduced in 1997 within the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) Work Orientations module. Designed to capture the affective facet of organizational commitment in large-scale, population-representative cross-national surveys, the scale operationalizes an employee’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in their employing organization. The instrument was derived from established organizational psychology inventories, specifically drawing items from Mowday, Steers, and Porter’s (1979) Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) and Cook and Wall’s (1980) British adaptation. Each item is rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly agree) to 5 (Strongly disagree), complemented by an explicit non-substantive response category (8 = Can’t choose), which is traditionally treated as missing data in psychometric scoring. Across successive survey waves (1997, 2005, and 2015), the ISSP OC scale has been translated into over 50 languages and administered across dozens of nations utilizing diverse survey administration modes, including Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI), Paper-and-Pencil Interviewing (PAPI), Computer-Assisted Self-Interviewing (CASI), Computer-Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI), and telephone interviews.

Psychometric evaluations based on the ISSP 2015 wave (comprising N = 26,100 working respondents across 38 countries) demonstrate that the instrument exhibits acceptable to good reliability and validity in 32 countries. Country-specific internal consistency estimates range from Cronbach’s alpha (α) = .50 to .76 and McDonald’s omega (ω) = .56 to .76, with a cross-national mean reliability of ω = .69. Application of the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula demonstrates that the three-item instrument achieves reliability comparable to a 15-item inventory (ω_corrected = .92). Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) demonstrate that the congeneric measurement model outperforms essentially tau-equivalent specifications. When modeled alongside occupational commitment to establish statistical over-identification, the scale demonstrates configural, metric, and approximate scalar measurement invariance across 32 countries, supporting cross-national comparisons of latent means, variances, and covariances. Nomological network analyses confirm robust convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity with key occupational correlates, including turnover intention, job satisfaction, subjective health, job security, and workplace harassment. The scale offers an economically viable, cross-culturally validated tool for macro-sociological and organizational research, though its brevity precludes its application in high-stakes individual diagnostics.

Keywords

organizational commitment, affective commitment, International Social Survey Programme, ISSP, cross-cultural psychometrics, measurement invariance, employee identification, job attitudes, workplace attachment, cross-national survey research

Authors

The Organizational Commitment Scale of the International Social Survey Programme was developed and standardized through collaborative international working groups within the ISSP Consortium. Primary methodological documentation, psychometric validation, and cross-national harmonization for the module have been led by survey methodologists and psychometricians affiliated with the GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Mannheim, Germany:

• Regina Jutz — GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Mannheim, Germany.
• Evi Scholz — GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Mannheim, Germany.
• Janet A. Harkness (†) — Survey Research Center, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, USA, and GESIS, Germany (pioneered cross-cultural translation methodologies for the ISSP 1997 module).
• International Social Survey Programme Work Orientations Drafting Groups — Composed of international delegates responsible for the design, piloting, and execution of the Work Orientations I–IV modules (1989, 1997, 2005, and 2015).

Purpose

The primary purpose of the ISSP Organizational Commitment Scale is to deliver an exceptionally concise, psychometrically sound, and cross-nationally standardized measure of affective organizational commitment suitable for deployment in general-population survey programs. In contemporary organizational behavior and sociological research, large-scale comparative programs face severe questionnaire constraints. Multi-thematic survey programs such as the ISSP, the European Social Survey (ESS), and the World Values Survey (WVS) must balance respondent burden, interview length, cognitive fatigue, and survey administration costs against the necessity of capturing complex psychosocial constructs. Traditional psychometric instruments designed to measure organizational commitment, such as the 15-item Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (Mowday et al., 1979) or the 8-item affective subscale of the Three-Component Model (Meyer & Allen, 1991), are prohibitively long for general-population social surveys containing hundreds of items spanning diverse sociological domains.

The ISSP OC scale addresses this structural limitation by condensing the core affective and behavioral-intentional components of organizational commitment into exactly three items. The instrument requires less than one minute of administration time, rendering it feasible across diverse interview modes (face-to-face CAPI/PAPI, self-administered web surveys, or telephone interviews). It is universally applicable to any individual currently employed for pay, regardless of industry sector, contractual arrangement, occupational prestige, or employment status (full-time versus part-time).

From an applied and theoretical perspective, the purpose of capturing organizational commitment in comparative sociology is twofold:

• Macro-Comparative and Policy Analysis: The scale enables macro-sociologists and labor economists to explore how institutional arrangements, national welfare regimes, employment protection legislation, and labor market flexibility influence the psychological contract between employees and organizations across countries.
• Organizational and Occupational Epidemiology: The scale provides researchers with a robust predictor of critical employee outcomes. Within empirical literature, affective organizational commitment is consistently linked to lower employee turnover, decreased absenteeism, heightened organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), elevated job performance, and enhanced mental and physical health.

Importantly, developers explicitly emphasize that the ISSP OC scale is designated strictly for group-level, academic, and macro-sociological research. Because ultra-short scales inherently trade narrow facet reliability for breadth and survey economy, the scale’s internal consistency (mean α = .69) falls below the rigorous threshold (α ≥ .90) demanded for high-stakes individual diagnostics or clinical and personnel selection decisions.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the ISSP OC scale is affective organizational commitment. Organizational commitment broadly reflects the psychological force that binds an individual to a course of action of relevance to one or more targets (Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001). Historically, psychometric research has conceptualized commitment from multidimensional perspectives, distinguishing affective attachment (desire to remain), continuance calculations (perceived costs of leaving), and normative obligations (perceived moral duty to remain). The ISSP OC scale deliberately concentrates on the affective dimension, which literature recognizes as the theoretical and empirical core of organizational attachment.

Affective commitment, as classically defined by Porter, Steers, Mowday, and Boulian (1974, p. 604), comprises three distinct, highly interrelated psychological manifestations:

1. A strong belief in and acceptance of the organization’s goals and values: The employee internalizes organizational missions and experiences deep psychological congruence between personal values and corporate identity.
2. A willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization: The individual is motivated to display discretionary behavior, working beyond minimal contractual duties to advance organizational survival and flourishing.
3. A strong desire to maintain membership in the organization: The employee demonstrates affective loyalty and intention to remain, resisting external financial or professional inducements to leave.

The three items of the ISSP OC scale operationalize these three dimensions directly:

• Discretionary Effort and Involvement (Item 1): “I am willing to work harder than I have to in order to help the firm or organization I work for succeed.” This item measures motivational and behavioral willingness to perform beyond routine job descriptions. It reflects an active, pro-organizational stance indicative of contextual performance and organizational citizenship behaviors.
• Identification and Organizational Pride (Item 2): “I am proud to be working for my firm or organization.” This item captures emotional resonance and self-categorization. Grounded in social identity theory, organizational pride indicates that an individual derives positive self-esteem and social identification from organizational affiliation.
• Retention Motivation and Loyalty Over Financial Gain (Item 3): “I would turn down another job that offered quite a bit more pay in order to stay with this organization.” This item establishes the threshold of affective loyalty. By assessing the willingness to forgo higher extrinsic compensation, the item differentiates intrinsic, affective commitment from calculative, transactional attachment.

Together, these items form a parsimonious, unidimensional affective commitment construct that avoids confounding affective attachment with occupational or professional commitment (the attachment to one’s trade, profession, or craft), which is measured via distinct items in the ISSP module.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical foundations of the ISSP Organizational Commitment Scale rest upon five decades of organizational psychology and occupational sociology. Three principal theoretical traditions delineate the emergence of the construct: Becker’s side-bet theory, Porter’s attitudinal model, and Meyer and Allen’s Three-Component Model.

Becker’s Side-Bet Theory (1960)

The earliest systematic conceptualization of commitment emerged from Howard S. Becker’s (1960) side-bet theory. Becker approached commitment from a structural, calculative paradigm. He argued that individuals become committed to organizations through accumulated investments, or “side bets”—pension schemes, non-transferable job skills, tenure-based seniority, community ties, and established social capital—that would be forfeited if they separated from the employer. Under this framework, commitment is not necessarily an emotional state, but a calculated realization of the prohibitive economic and social costs associated with organizational departure.

Porter’s Attitudinal Model (1974) and the OCQ

In contrast to Becker’s economic framing, Porter, Steers, Mowday, and Boulian (1974) and subsequent work by Mowday, Steers, and Porter (1979) redefined organizational commitment as an affective attitude. They argued that calculative attachment fails to explain why employees exert spontaneous, creative, and discretionary effort on behalf of employers. Porter and colleagues asserted that true commitment is an active, positive emotional orientation characterized by pride, identification, and shared values. This conceptualization culminated in the 15-item Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ), which served as the structural progenitor for the ISSP scale items.

The Three-Component Model (Meyer & Allen, 1991) and Its Empirical Critique

During the 1990s, organizational psychology became dominated by Meyer and Allen’s (1991) Three-Component Model (TCM), which integrated earlier paradigms into three distinct psychological mindsets:

• Affective Commitment: Attachment based on emotional desire (“want to stay”).
• Continuance Commitment: Attachment based on perceived costs and investments, reflecting Becker’s side-bet theory (“need to stay”).
• Normative Commitment: Attachment based on moral obligation and internalized social norms (“ought to stay”; Wiener & Vardi, 1980).

Despite its widespread adoption, comprehensive meta-analyses and theoretical reviews exposed substantial psychometric and conceptual vulnerabilities within the TCM. In a landmark critique, Solinger, van Olffen, and Roe (2008) demonstrated that the Three-Component Model conflates an attitude toward an organization (affective commitment) with attitudes toward behaviors (the decision to stay or leave, captured by continuance and normative commitment). Crucially, empirical evaluations consistently showed an exceptionally high obliqueness (inter-correlation) between affective and normative commitment (often r > .70), rendering the normative dimension largely redundant (Meyer et al., 2002).

Furthermore, meta-analytic evidence (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005) confirmed that affective commitment is the sole dimension that consistently displays powerful, criterion-related validity across all behavioral domains, including in-role performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, employee well-being, and voluntary withdrawal. Consequently, the design team of the ISSP Work Orientations module anchored the ISSP OC scale exclusively in the affective paradigm, isolating the cleanest, most generalizable core of organizational commitment for international comparative inquiry.

Validity

The validity of the ISSP Organizational Commitment Scale has been rigorously evaluated across multiple cross-national waves, with exhaustive psychometric benchmarking conducted on the ISSP 2015 dataset across 38 participating nations.

Content and Construct Validity

Content validity is established through the direct derivation of the three items from canonical, validated commitment inventories (Mowday et al., 1979; Cook & Wall, 1980). The items directly reflect the three facets of Porter et al.’s (1974) affective definition: motivational effort (Item 1), emotional pride/identification (Item 2), and affective retention (Item 3). Multi-method translation protocols adhering to the TRAPD (Translation, Review, Adjudication, Pretesting, and Documentation) methodology (Harkness, 2001) ensured that semantic nuance, cognitive equivalency, and linguistic content validity remained stable across all 50 language adaptations.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

A critical psychometric hurdle in measuring organizational commitment within broad sociodemographic surveys is preventing construct contamination with occupational commitment (identification with one’s profession, trade, or career). While an employee may feel passionate about being a software engineer or a physician, they may experience profound alienation toward their specific employing firm. Using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis across 38 nations, researchers tested whether a correlated two-factor model (separating organizational commitment from occupational commitment) proved superior to a collapsed, one-factor model.

Across 32 of the 38 countries, the correlated two-factor model demonstrated superior empirical fit (Comparative Fit Index [CFI] > .963, Standardized Root Mean Square Residual [SRMR] < .029), whereas the unidimensional model suffered severe misfit (RMSEA > .100 across 29 countries). Latent correlations between organizational and occupational commitment ranged from r = .45 to .54, aligning precisely with established meta-analytic benchmarks (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005). These findings confirm that respondents clearly distinguish emotional attachment to their employing enterprise from commitment to their occupational craft, substantiating the scale’s discriminant validity.

Nomological Network and Criterion-Related Validity

Criterion-related validity was corroborated through hierarchical linear modeling and random-intercept, random-slopes multilevel models across all participating countries. Evaluating effect sizes according to Gignac and Szodorai’s (2016) empirical guidelines (small: r = .10, medium: r = .20, large: r = .30), the ISSP OC scale demonstrated robust associations within its expected nomological network:

• Job Satisfaction: Consistently displayed the strongest positive association with organizational commitment (mean r ≈ .53), replicating standard organizational behavior literature (Tett & Meyer, 1993).
• Turnover Intentions: Multilevel analyses confirmed that affective commitment served as a significant negative predictor of employee turnover intentions and job search behaviors, echoing findings by Lapointe, Vandenberghe, and Panaccio (2011).
• Health and Well-Being: The scale exhibited statistically significant positive correlations with self-rated general physical health and psychological well-being (r ≈ .15 to .25), affirming the role of organizational attachment as a salutogenic psychosocial resource (Vander Elst et al., 2014).
• Workplace Resources and Job Characteristics: The scale correlated positively with perceived workplace training opportunities (r ≈ .25), career advancement and promotion opportunities (r ≈ .28), perceived job security (r ≈ .30), and schedule flexibility (r = .35; Kooij et al., 2010).
• Workplace Stressors and Hostility: Negative correlations emerged between organizational commitment and experienced workplace discrimination, bullying, and psychological harassment (r ≈ −.20 to −.30; Nielsen & Einarsen, 2012), as well as chronic job stress (r ≈ −.15 to −.25; Jamal, 2011).
• Demographic Correlates: Aligning with established meta-analyses (Cohen, 1993; Mathieu & Zajac, 1990), organizational commitment correlated modestly with respondent age (r ≈ .20), showed higher levels among white-collar compared to blue-collar workers (r ≈ .20), and revealed no systematic correlation with employee gender.

Reliability

Evaluating internal consistency in ultra-short scales requires nuanced psychometric considerations. Because traditional estimators such as Cronbach’s alpha (α) are mathematically dependent on scale length, short scales naturally produce lower coefficient values despite high underlying construct fidelity. Furthermore, Cronbach’s alpha relies on the restrictive assumption of essential tau-equivalence (equal true-score factor loadings across all items). When tau-equivalence is violated, alpha underestimates true scale reliability.

To overcome these limitations, psychometric investigations of the ISSP 2015 dataset reported both Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega (ω) based on multi-group confirmatory factor analyses. Across the 32 validated nations (total analyzed N = 24,816), the reliability coefficients demonstrated acceptable to good internal consistency:

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): Ranged from α = .50 (Mexico) and α = .60 (Suriname, Switzerland) to α = .76 (Russia), with a cross-national mean of α = .69.
• McDonald’s Omega (ω): Ranged from ω = .56 (Mexico) and ω = .60 (Suriname) to ω = .76 (China, Russia), with a cross-national mean of ω = .69. Representative country estimates include the United States (ω = .67), Great Britain (ω = .67), Germany (ω = .65), France (ω = .75), Japan (ω = .75), Czech Republic (ω = .74), and Taiwan (ω = .75).
• Average Variance Extracted (AVE): Average Variance Extracted across the 32 validated nations averaged .43, ranging from .33 (Mexico, Suriname) to .51 (China, Hungary, Russia).

To contextualize these coefficients against canonical full-length scales, the developers applied the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula. Comparing the 3-item ISSP scale to the 15-item Mowday et al. (1979) OCQ (which traditionally yields α ≈ .90), a test length adjustment factor of k = 5 (15 items / 3 items) yields a predicted reliability of:

ω_corrected = [5 × .69] / [1 + (5 − 1) × .69] = 3.45 / 3.76 = .92

This mathematical equivalence proves that the items of the ISSP OC scale possess item-level measurement precision comparable to the classic 15-item inventory. The scale is sufficiently reliable for group-level regression, structural equation modeling, and cross-national comparisons, though researchers are cautioned against using it for individual diagnostic screening.

Factor Analysis

The factorial structure and structural invariance of the ISSP OC scale were comprehensively evaluated utilizing full-information maximum likelihood (FIML) estimation to accommodate missing data, combined with robust maximum likelihood (MLR) corrections to account for deviations from multivariate normality.

Model Identification and Structural Comparison

In structural equation modeling, a single-factor CFA with exactly three manifest indicators is mathematically just-identified (degrees of freedom df = 0). A just-identified model yields a unique mathematical solution with zero degrees of freedom, rendering goodness-of-fit indices (such as χ², CFI, RMSEA, and SRMR) impossible to evaluate. To generate degrees of freedom and rigorously test the latent structure, psychometricians modeled the 3-item ISSP OC scale alongside the 2-item Occupational Commitment scale from the same module, yielding a 5-item, correlated two-factor framework (df > 0).

Two substantive residual covariances were specified between items sharing parallel semantic phrasing across constructs: between Item 3 of the OC scale (turning down another job for more pay) and Item 1 of the occupational scale (changing work type if given the chance), and between Item 2 of the OC scale (pride in organization) and Item 2 of the occupational scale (pride in work type). Statistical model comparisons were conducted according to the fit thresholds established by Hu and Bentler (1999) (CFI ≥ .95, SRMR ≤ .08) and Browne and Cudeck (1992) (RMSEA ≤ .05 good, ≤ .08 acceptable):

• Correlated Two-Factor Model: Displayed outstanding fit across 32 countries (CFI > .963, SRMR < .029). Six countries were excluded from cross-national comparison due to estimation issues: India (non-convergence), Philippines (negative empirical correlations among occupational items), and Georgia, Israel, Chile, and Venezuela (where model parameters indicated alternate local structures).
• Essential Tau-Equivalence Testing: Constraining unstandardized factor loadings to equality within factors resulted in statistically significant degradation of global model fit across multiple countries (CFI < .950, RMSEA > .100). Consequently, tau-equivalence was rejected, establishing that the congeneric model (allowing freely estimated factor loadings) represents the true latent structure.

Standardized Factor Loadings

In a multi-group CFA across the 32 valid countries (χ²(64) = 176.192, p < .001, CFI = .996, RMSEA = .052, SRMR = .013), standardized factor loadings (λ) demonstrated high selectivity:

• Item 1 (λ): Ranged from .45 (Norway) to .80 (Turkey), with typical values exceeding .60 across North American and European nations.
• Item 2 (λ): Represented the strongest indicator of the latent construct across all nations, with loadings ranging from .78 (Mexico) to .97 (Czech Republic).
• Item 3 (λ): Exhibited moderate to strong loadings across most nations (.40 to .72 in Finland), with the lowest loading observed in Mexico (.18).

With minimal isolated exceptions, all item factor loadings substantially exceeded the classical psychometric selectivity benchmark of λ > .30 (Floyd & Widaman, 1995), confirming that all three manifest indicators capture substantial variance of the underlying affective commitment dimension.

Cross-National Measurement Invariance

To determine whether scale scores can be meaningfully compared across nations, multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) was conducted to evaluate the hierarchical levels of measurement invariance:

• Configural Invariance: Successfully established; the two-factor congeneric structure holds across all 32 nations, demonstrating that respondents in disparate cultural contexts conceptualize organizational commitment via the same structural framework.
• Metric (Weak) Invariance: Factor loadings proved invariant across countries, confirming that the scale items manifest equivalent scale metrics and meaning across cultures, enabling the valid comparison of latent variances and covariances.
• Approximate Scalar Invariance: Evaluated using alignment optimization and approximate Bayesian invariance testing. The ISSP OC scale demonstrated approximate scalar invariance across the 32 countries, satisfying the prerequisite for comparing latent means across different countries without bias stemming from differential item functioning (DIF) or cultural response styles.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications of the ISSP Organizational Commitment Scale are detailed below:

• Instrument Name: Organizational Commitment Scale (ISSP OC scale)
• Construct Measured: Affective Organizational Commitment (employee identification, involvement, and emotional loyalty)
• Assessment Type: Self-report questionnaire / interviewer-administered survey scale
• Target Population: Any individual currently engaged in paid employment (working for pay), across all occupational classes and contractual types
• Item Count: 3 items
• Administration Time: Under 1 minute (< 60 seconds)
• Administration Modes:
  • Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI)
  • Paper-and-Pencil Interviewing (PAPI)
  • Computer-Assisted Self-Interviewing (CASI)
  • Computer-Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI)
  • Standardized Telephone Interviews (CATI)
• Available Language Versions: Over 50 official linguistic adaptations, including Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australian, British, Canadian, New Zealand, US), Estonian, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Hebrew, Icelandic, 11 Indian languages, Japanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, 6 Philippine languages, Polish, Russian, Slovakian, Slovenian, 6 South African languages, Spanish, Surinamese, Swedish, Taiwanese, and Turkish.
• Authentic Response Scale: Respondents give their answers on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly agree/Stimme voll und ganz zu, 2 = agree/Stimme zu, 3 = Neither agree nor disagree/Weder noch, 4 = disagree/Stimme nicht zu, to 5 = Strongly disagree/Stimme überhaupt nicht zu). Moreover, participants can answer with an extra category, namely 8 = Can’t choose/Kann ich nicht sagen. We coded this category as a missing value.
• Scoring and Transformation Protocol:
  • Item Inversion: In the original survey administration, 1 indicates Strongly agree and 5 indicates Strongly disagree. For psychometric reporting, statistical modeling, and intuitive interpretation, all three items are inverted: Recoded Score = 6 − Original Score (such that 1 = Strongly disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Neither agree nor disagree, 4 = Agree, and 5 = Strongly agree).
  • Missing Value Treatment: The response category 8 (“Can’t choose”) is coded as a system missing value and excluded from substantive scale scoring.
  • Scale Score Calculation: The scale score is calculated as the unweighted arithmetic mean of the three inverted items:

    Score_OC = [Item 1_recoded + Item 2_recoded + Item 3_recoded] / 3

  • Completeness Rule: It is strongly recommended to compute the mean scale score only for respondents with complete, valid data across all three items. Mean scores range from 1.0 to 5.0, where higher scores represent higher levels of affective organizational commitment.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Organizational Commitment Scale was first integrated into the International Social Survey Programme in the 1997 Work Orientations II module and subsequently replicated and validated in the 2005 (Work Orientations III) and 2015 (Work Orientations IV) modules. Harmonization, technical variable reports, and longitudinal datasets are curated and distributed through the GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences (DOI: 10.4232/1.12848).

In accordance with the Open Science principles of the ISSP and academic research traditions, the ISSP OC scale is in the public domain for scientific, educational, non-commercial research, and organizational benchmarking. No licensing fees, formal permissions, or proprietary contracts are required to utilize, reproduce, or translate the scale items for non-commercial academic research. Researchers utilizing data from the ISSP repository or deploying the scale items in primary empirical fieldwork are requested to cite the primary methodological validation reports (e.g., Jutz & Scholz, 2017) and the International Social Survey Programme data archive. The complete multilingual questionnaires, technical documentation, and survey variable reports are freely accessible via the official ISSP repository and GESIS portals.

References

• Allen, N. J., & Meyer, J. P. (1990). The measurement and antecedents of affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 63(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8325.1990.tb00506.x
• Becker, H. S. (1960). Notes on the concept of commitment. American Journal of Sociology, 66(1), 32–40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2089716
• Browne, M. W., & Cudeck, R. (1992). Alternative ways of assessing model fit. Sociological Methods & Research, 21(2), 230–258. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124192021002005
• Cook, J., & Wall, T. (1980). New work attitude measures of trust, organizational commitment and personal need non-fulfilment. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 53(1), 39–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8325.1980.tb00005.x
• Cooper-Hakim, A., & Viswesvaran, C. (2005). The construct of work commitment: Testing an integrative framework. Psychological Bulletin, 131(2), 241–259. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.131.2.241
• Cronbach, L. J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16(3), 297–334. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02310555
• Floyd, F. J., & Widaman, K. F. (1995). Factor analysis in the development and refinement of clinical assessment instruments. Psychological Assessment, 7(3), 286–299. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1995-98569-001
• Gignac, G. E., & Szodorai, E. T. (2016). Effect size guidelines for individual differences researchers. Personality and Individual Differences, 102, 74–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.042
• Harkness, J. A. (2001). Questionnaire translation. In J. A. Harkness, F. J. R. van de Vijver, & P. P. Mohler (Eds.), Cross-Cultural Survey Methods (pp. 35–56). John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/0471725207.ch2
• Hu, L. t., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705519909540118
• ISSP Research Group (2017). International Social Survey Programme: Work Orientations IV – ISSP 2015 (GESIS Data Archive, Cologne, ZA6770 Data file Version 2.1.0). https://doi.org/10.4232/1.12848
• Jutz, R., & Scholz, E. (2017). ISSP 2015 Work Orientations IV: Variable Report. GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences.
• Mathieu, J. E., & Zajac, D. M. (1990). A review and meta-analysis of the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of organizational commitment. Psychological Bulletin, 108(2), 171–194. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1990-28114-001
• McDonald, R. P. (1999). Test theory: A unified treatment. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1991). A three-component conceptualization of organizational commitment. Human Resource Management Review, 1(1), 61–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/1053-4822(91)90011-Z
• Meyer, J. P., Stanley, D. J., Herscovitch, L., & Topolnytsky, L. (2002). Affective, continuance, and normative commitment to the organization: A meta-analysis of antecedents, correlates, and consequences. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 61(1), 20–52. https://doi.org/10.1006/jvbe.2001.1842
• Mowday, R. T., Steers, R. M., & Porter, L. W. (1979). The measurement of organizational commitment. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14(2), 224–247. https://doi.org/10.1016/0001-8791(79)90072-1
• Porter, L. W., Steers, R. M., Mowday, R. T., & Boulian, P. V. (1974). Organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover among psychiatric technicians. Journal of Applied Psychology, 59(5), 603–609. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0037335
• Solinger, O. N., van Olffen, W., & Roe, R. A. (2008). Beyond the three-component model of organizational commitment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 70–83. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.70
• Tett, R. P., & Meyer, J. P. (1993). Job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intention, and turnover: Path analyses based on meta-analytic findings. Personnel Psychology, 46(2), 259–293. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1993.tb00874.x
• Urban, M. (2022). R code and documentation for the psychometric validation of the ISSP Organizational Commitment Scale. GESIS Psychometrics Repository.
• Vander Elst, T., De Cuyper, N., Baillien, E., Niesen, W., & De Witte, H. (2014). Perceived job insecurity and employee health: The role of affective commitment. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 85(1), 99–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2014.07.003

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)

Below are the authentic scale items in their original language as published in the standard psychometric validation studies, without modification or translation to preserve instrument validity and reliability:
Response Scale: Respondents give their answers on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly agree/Stimme voll und ganz zu, 2 = agree/Stimme zu, 3 = Neither agree nor disagree/Weder noch, 4 = disagree/Stimme nicht zu, to 5 = Strongly disagree/Stimme überhaupt nicht zu). Moreover, participants can answer with an extra category, namely 8 = Can’t choose/Kann ich nicht sagen. We coded this category as a missing value.
1
14
2
86
3
99
4
13
5
53
★
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