Cutoff scores for workplace bullying: The Spanish Short-Negative Acts Questionnaire (S-NAQ)

Workplace bullying is considered a major social stressor at work. However, in the Spanish context, there is a lack of measures that allow researchers and practitioners to distinguish between non-targets and targets of workplace bullying.

This study reports the psychometric properties, factor structure, and cutoff scores for the Short-Negative Acts Questionnaire (S-NAQ) in a Spanish sample (N = 1,409).

The S-NAQ demonstrated adequate psychometric properties. Moreover, both Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis revealed that a unifactorial model of workplace bullying fit the data best. Two cutoff points for the S-NAQ were formulated using receiver operating characteristic curves to categorize respondents as "not exposed to workplace bullying" (scores below 15), "at risk of being bullied" (scores between 15 and 22), and "targets of workplace bullying" (scores above 22).

These cutoff scores may help researchers and practitioners in diagnosing workplace bullying and designing intervention strategies.