Investigating the incremental validity of employee engagement in the prediction of employee effectiveness: A meta-analytic path analysis

- We assessed the incremental validity of employee engagement (EE)
- Meta-analytic estimates were computed and path analyses were conducted
- In predicting employee effectiveness, EE has incremental validity over specific individual job attitudes
- However, EE does not have incremental validity over a higher-order construct representing three other job attitudes
- Results suggest EE represents a higher-order job attitude construct that commendably predicts employee effectiveness

The current study used meta-analytic estimates and path analysis to examine whether the construct of employee engagement (EE) shows incremental validity in the prediction of employee effectiveness (a broad measure of performance-related behaviors) over other job attitudes such as job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. Meta-analytic estimates between EE and various employee effectiveness indicators were computed from 49 published correlations representing a total of 22,090 individuals. We combined these estimates with published meta-analytic estimates between employee effectiveness and job attitudes to produce a meta-matrix representing 1,161 unique correlations. Using this meta-matrix, a series of path model comparisons produced two results: (1) EE bears low to moderate incremental validity over individual job attitudes (R2 change of 0.02 to 0.06), and (2) EE bears low incremental validity over a higher-order job attitude construct representing the combination of other job attitudes in the prediction of a higher-order employee effectiveness construct (R2 change of 0.01). Given the brevity of popular EE measures, the results suggest EE is better conceptualized as a higher-order measure of job attitudes that is an effective and concise predictor of employee effectiveness.