Are You Working Vigorously? Adaptation and Validation of the Thai Version of Shirom-Melamed Vigor Scale

Abstract

S upporting the application of positive psychology in the workplace, the Shirom Melamed Vigor Scale (SMVS), which assesses vigorous feelings at work, was adapted to the Thai context. The Thai SMVS contains 14 items as in the original scale and was validated using a sample of 585 employed participants in Thailand. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis are consistent with the conceptual model of vigour as consisting of physical strength, cognitive liveliness, and emotional energy, with a suggestion that a 13-item scale can also be used. As expected, vigour has been found to be conceptually distinct from some similar constructs, and independent from job burnout. Vigour also showed unique predictive effects on employees' health. These results support the previously-proposed conceptual framework of vigour and indicate crucial roles of positive emotion in the work setting. In concordance with a positive organisational psychology approach, applications of the Thai vigor scale are discussed with respect to its potential for enhancing employees' wellbeing and productivity.

Construct Validity of the French Shirom-Melamed Vigor Measure (F-SMVM)

“…Firstly, the present results confirmed the theoretical assumptions and the validity of the F-SMVMv2 (after having tested a preliminary version and developed a reformulated version) by showing that the three dimensions of vigor conceptualized by Shirom (2003) exhibited good reliability (i.e., Cronbach's alpha coefficients above the recommended cut-off criteria) among French-speaking workers, and with a 3-factor analysis showing acceptable fit to the data after suppression of three items (i.e., physical strength 3, physical strength 9, and emotional energy 15) which exhibited cross-loadings and/or shared covariance. This three-factor model is in-line with studies that used the SMVM with English (Wefald et al, 2012), Turkish (Bilgel et al, 2012), Thai (Boonyasiriwat et al, 2017), Norwegian (Furunes & Mykletun, 2012), Spanish (Pulido-Martos et al, 2017), and Israeli (Shirom, 2003;Shirom et al, 2008) speaking participants. Furthermore, Wefald et al (2012) showed that the model with three factors displayed a better fit to the data than a one-factor model.…”

“…Indeed, this one makes it possible to examine the convergence and the divergence between two constructs. Finally, even if the SMVM has been validated in different languages (i.e., Turkish, Thai, Norwegian, English, Spanish; Bilgel, Bayram, Ozdemir, Dogan, & Ekin, 2012; Boonyasiriwat, Srisuwannatat, & Puttaravuttiporn, 2017; Furunes & Mykletun, 2012; Little et al., 2011; Pulido-Martos, Meléndez-Domínguez, & Lopez-Zafra, 2017) it has not been validated in French. Having a valid measure in French will allow for further research on the vigor of French-speaking workers and for cross-cultural studies.…”