Development and validation of the Work Envy Appraisal Scale (WEAS) for Spanish workers

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Organizational Behavior

Background:

• Envy significantly impacts employee behavior and performance.
• Existing envy measurement tools lack focus on work-specific appraisals like challenge and threat.
• Lazarus and Folkman's transactional theory of stress provides a framework for understanding envy appraisals.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate the Work Envy Appraisal Scale (WEAS) for Spanish workers.
• To differentiate between benign envy (challenge appraisal) and malicious envy (threat appraisal) in the workplace.
• To provide a reliable and valid instrument for measuring envy at work.

Main Methods:

• Scale construction and exploratory factor analysis (Sample 1, N=100).
• Scale validation and psychometric property analysis using confirmatory and multigroup factor analysis (Sample 2, N=219; Sample 3, N=532).
• Assessment of convergent and discriminant validity.

Main Results:

• The Work Envy Appraisal Scale (WEAS) demonstrated a robust two-factor structure.
• Good model fit indices were obtained through exploratory, confirmatory, and multigroup factor analyses.
• The scale exhibited adequate convergent and discriminant validity, confirming its reliability and validity.

Conclusions:

• The WEAS is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring envy in the workplace.
• Distinguishing between challenge and threat appraisals of envy facilitates clearer research on workplace envy.
• The WEAS can address research challenges such as social desirability and envy confusion.