The Chinese Workplace Bullying Scale (CWBS) - The Structure and Validation

The study aims to investigate the structure of a Workplace Bullying Scale developed to measure bullying behaviours in the indigenous Chinese work place context. The Scale was developed using standard methods for instrument design involving literature review, interview, pilot study and survey. Based on the literature, interview and pilot study, items for the Chinese Workplace Bullying Scale were developed. Items were generated through open-ended and structure interviews with 127 interviewees who worked in different enterprises. The preliminary CWBS was then designed and data were collected from an experimental sample consisted of 229 employees of different companies from various regions in China. Exploratory Factor analysis (EFA) was applied to investigate the factorial structure of the CWBS using data collected from the test sample. The factorial validity was further confirmed with Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) using a test sample of 207 workers. Results of the CFA indicated a three-factor structure of the CWBS including personal attack, attack through work tasks, and social exclusion. Further studies were conducted to examine the reliability and validity of the scale. Cronhach’s alpha values provided evidence for good internal reliability with values ranging from 0.71 to 0.85. The predictive power of the CWBS was also demonstrated using hierarchical regression analyses.