Assessing the Psychosocial Characteristics of Occupational Training Environments

Two forms of the Insel & Moos' Work Environment Scale (WES) were administered to 589 Navy enlisted men and women, one at the beginning of a 14‐week paramedical training course (assessing expectations of what the occupational training environment would be like) and one eight weeks later (assessing perceptions of what the environment was actually like). Ten of the factors extracted from student responses to each form were rotated to simple structure and scales were constructed to assess six factors which were represented in the responses to both forms, accounting for 70 per cent of the common variance, and also a seventh factor which was represented only in responses to the second form, accounting for an additional 13 per cent of the common variance. The average interscale correlation and split‐half reliability for the factor scales were approximately 0·21 and 0·72 for both forms. Generality and potential uses of the WES in occupational training environments are discussed.