Workaholism has been conceptualized as a syndrome although there have been few tests that explicitly consider its syndrome status. The authors analyzed a three-dimensional scale of workaholism developed by Spence and Robbins (1992) using cluster analysis. The authors identified three clusters of individuals, one of which corresponded to Spence and Robbins's profile of the workaholic (high work involvement, high drive to work, low work enjoyment). Consistent with previously conjectured relations with workaholism, individuals in the workaholic cluster were more likely to label themselves as workaholics, more likely to have acquaintances label them as workaholics, and more likely to have lower life satisfaction and higher work-life imbalance. The importance of considering workaholism as a syndrome and the implications for effective interventions are discussed.

In this field study (N = 405) population profiling was introduced to examine general and specific classes of nonresponse (active vs. passive) to a satisfaction survey. The active nonrespondent group (i.e., purposeful nonresponders) was relatively small (approximately 15%). Active nonrespondents, in comparison with respondents, were less satisfied with the entity sponsoring the survey and were less conscientious. Passive nonrespondents (e.g., forgot), who represented the majority of nonrespondents, were attitudinally similar to respondents but differed with regard to personality. Nonresponse bias does not appear to be a substantive concern for satisfaction type variables--the typical core of an organizational survey. If the survey concerns topics strongly related to Conscientiousness and Agreeableness, the respondent sample may not be representative of the population.

The Job Descriptive Index is a popular measure of job satisfaction with five subscales containing 72 items. A national sample ( n = 1,534) and a sample of university workers ( n = 636) supported development of an abridged version of the Job Descriptive Index (AJDI) containing a total of 25 items. A systematic scale-reduction technique was employed with the first sample to decide which items to retain in each scale. The abridged subscales were then tested in the second sample. Results indicated that the relationships among the five abridged subscales and between the five abridged subscales and other measures were substantially preserved.

A new measure of workaholism, the Workaholism Analysis Questionnaire (WAQ), was created and validated in a heterogeneous sample of working professionals. The WAQ demonstrated strong internal reliability, convergent validity, concurrent validity, discriminant validity, and content validity. This is the first study to create a measure of workaholism that was psychometrically tested on a heterogeneous working population. Furthermore, the WAQ is the first measure to define workaholism more broadly and provide a more comprehensive assessment by including items that directly tap into work-life imbalance, a common symptom of workaholism and other addictive disorders.

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