The short form of the Workplace Affective Commitment Multidimensional Questionnaire (WACMQ-S): A bifactor-ESEM approach among healthcare professionals

Although it has long been recognized that employees' workplace affective commitment can be directed at a variety of foci, theory and research on this multifocal perspective remain underdeveloped, possibly due to the lack of a short, yet comprehensive measure. The purpose of the present study was to assess the psychometric properties of a newly developed short (24-item) version of the Workplace Affective Commitment Multidimensional Questionnaire (WACMQ-S), covering affective commitment directed at the organization, supervisor, coworkers, customers, tasks, profession, work, and career. Using two independent samples of English - (N = 676, including 648 females) and French - (N = 733, including 593 females) speaking healthcare professionals and the newly developed bifactor-ESEM framework, the present study supported the factor validity, composite reliability, test-retest reliability, linguistic invariance, and criterion-related validity (in relation to turnover intentions, in-role performance, and organizational citizenship behaviors) of the WACMQ-S ratings. The results also demonstrated the superiority of a bifactor-ESEM representation of WACMQ-S ratings, confirming the importance of taking into account employees' global levels of commitment to their work life. Finally, the results also proved to be fully generalizable to subsamples of hospital and community healthcare professionals, as well as of nurses and beneficiary attendants.