Validation and Measurement of Perceived Environmental Threat as an Antecedent to Job Insecurity

Abstract

The Perceived Environmental Threat scale was designed to measure perception of environmental sources of threat to an individual's job. A total of 276 managers responded to a survey to test the psychometric characteristics. Analysis supported the internal reliability and factor structure and anticipated correlations were observed with two measures of job insecurity. The Perceived Environmental Threat scale also demonstrated convergent validity as scores correlated positively with those on Anticipated Organizational Change which, generally, did not correlate significantly with trust, commitment, or role ambiguity, variables with which it was not expected to be related. The evidence was generally supportive of the overall psychometric properties, offering academic researchers and managers a useful means of evaluating perceived environmental threat.