Exploratory factorial analysis of the working enviroment scale (WES) among employees of a public psychiatric hospital in Bucaramanga, Colombia

• Published in: Revista de la Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional de Colombia Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2007-01, Vol.55 (1), p.24-30
• Main Authors: Lucía Quintero Isaza, Renate Biela, Alba Barrera, Adalberto Campo Arias
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: estudios de validación; hospitales psiquiátricos; satisfacción laboral
• ISSN: 0120-0011; 2357-3848

Background. Job satisfaction is an important factor to guarantee work productivity. There are various scales to measure job satisfaction. Out of these scales, the recently validated Working Environment Scale-10 (WES-10) is the most brief. However, up to date the factor structure of the WES-10 has not been explored among any Colombian working populations. Objective. To determine the factor structure of the WES-10 among employees of a public psychiatric hospital in Bucaramanga, Colombia. Materials and methods. It was designed a validation study without a gold standard. Two-hundred seventeen workers participated, the mean age was 37.7 years (SD±9.8); 75.4% were women; 49.5% were narried; 37.0% were technical or vocacional degree; 58.7% lived in middle class neigbourhood; 51.7% were assistancial functions; and have been working in the hospital the mean of 13.0 year (SD± 8.8). The WES-10 is a 10-item device with five options of ordinal answer. It was done an exploratory factor analysis using the principal component method. Factors with eigenvalue over 1.0 were retrained. Results. The WES-10 showed internal consistency of 0.78 and bidimensional structure accounted for 48.8% of the variance. Factor one (working adjustment) presented an eigenvalue of 3.49; and factor two (self-realization), 1.39. Conclusions. The WES-10 presents an acceptable internal consistency and may be used for research purposes. Its bidimentional structure explores approximately the proposed construct.