Work engagement scale: Validating the Japanese UWES-9 standard through an automotive industry sample

The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) is widely used as a psychometric assessment scale to measure work engagement by relative evaluation. Determining standard values for absolute evaluation would make it more useful. The merit of absolute evaluation is that it can offer an objective evaluation to personnel members regardless of their status in the organization.

This study examines the criteria for absolute evaluation of the Japanese version of UWES-9 and creates a database for the evaluation of work engagement.

To examine the evaluation criteria for the total points of UWES-9 for 417 automotive industry workers, responses were validated via a one-way analysis of variance and receiver-operating characteristic analysis, using the scales of "worthwhileness of work" and "level of job satisfaction" in the Brief Job Stress Questionnaire with similar work engagement concepts.

In both scales, the ability to predict was at its highest when divided into the high work engagement group (wherein the total points of UWES-9 are 21 points and above).

In the relative evaluation, 24 points from the average of the total points of UWES-9 is the standard. In the absolute evaluation, the lower standard around 21 points is probable.