Construct Validation of Two Instruments Designed to Measure Job Involvement and Work Centrality

The authors clarified the relationship between 2 concepts that have been confused, and often used interchangeably, in the literature. Job involvement was defined as the degree to which one is cognitively preoccupied with, engaged in, and concerned with one's present job. Work centrality was defined as the degree of importance that work, in general, plays in one's life. Questionnaire measures consistent with these definitions were constructed and tested. Data were collected from 313 human services employees. Confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that, consistent with the authors' hypothesis, job involvement and work centrality appear to be 2 distinct constructs. There was also evidence to confirm the hypothesis that there are 2 distinct components of job involvement: job involvement-role and job involvement-setting.