Measurement invariance of cognitive and affective job insecurity: A cross-national study

Empirical evidence of established measurement invariance of job insecurity measures may enhance the practical utility of job insecurity as a valid predictor when utilised over different cross-national samples. This study investigated the measurement invariance of the nine-item versions of the Job Security Index (a measure of cognitive job insecurity) and the Job Security Satisfaction Scale (a measure of affective job insecurity), across four countries (i.e. the United States, N = 486; China, N = 629; Italy, N = 482 and South Africa, N = 345). Based on a novel bifactor-(S-1) model approach we found evidence for partial metric, partial scalar and partial strict invariance of our substantive bifactor-(S-1) structure. The results extend measurement invariance research on job insecurity with obvious pragmatic implications (e.g. scaling units, measurement bias over cross-national interpretations). This research provides evidence to support the applied use of cross-national comparisons of job insecurity scores across the nationalities included in this study. Theoretically, this research advances the debate about the nature of the relationship between cognitive and affective job insecurity, suggesting that in this cross-national dataset, a model where cognitive job insecurity is specified as the reference domain outperforms a model where affective job insecurity is assigned this status. Practically, it demonstrates that it is sensible and necessary to differentiate between cognitive and affective job insecurity and include measures of both constructs in future research on the construct.