Development and validation of the Quality of Work Life Scale for elderly workers

With the rapid rise in the elderly population and their labour force participation, quality of work life (QoWL) of elderly workers becomes an important concept. A valid instrument to measure elderly workers QoWL is a prerequisite to further in this direction.

To develop and validate the Quality of Work Life Scale-Elderly (QoWLS-E) for elderly workers 60 years and above in Sri Lanka.

The development and validation of 35 items in QoWLS-E was carried out in two stages. Using a literature search and expert opinion, the items were developed in English language and later translated to Sinhala language. The initial scale consisted of 38 items and a principle component analysis (PCA) was conducted among 275 elderly workers in selected administrative divisions of Colombo district. Then a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted among a separate group of 250 elderly workers to confirm the factor structure of the developed scale.

PCA identified 9 principle components accounting for a variance of 71%, which was later confirmed in the CFA (RMSEA-0.07, SRMR-1.0, NNFI-0.87, GFI-0.82, CFI-0.96). The final QoWLS-E with a structure of 9 domains namely; physical health, psychological, welfare facility, safety, job content, co-worker, supervisor, flexibility and autonomy having 35 items correlated satisfactorily with Cronbach's alpha of 0.77 and test - retest reliability of 0.82.

QoWLS-E is conceptually and culturally appropriate to assess Quality of Work Life Scale in elderly. It could be a useful tool to describe and monitor improvement of QOWL in elderly.