The Feasibility of Single-Item Measures for Organizational Justice

Abstract

Researchers in a number of disciplines have examined the utility of single-item measures for both affective and cognitive constructs. While these authors have indicated that, under certain circumstances, the use of single-item measures is appropriate, there remains concern regarding the reliability and validity of singleitem measures. This study attempts to address these concerns by comparing the reliability and validity of single-item and full-scale measures for three dimensions of organizational justice. There are an increasing number of studies in organizational behavior, as well as sport management, that have explored the importance of justice and its influence on various attitudes and behaviors. However, to date there have been no attempts to develop single-item measures for each of the dimensions of organizational justice. The development of single-item measures for organizational justice could provide researchers with practical and psychometric advantages compared with full-scale measures. Two separate methods were used to test the reliability of single-item measures while concurrent validity was measured with a global measure of job satisfaction. Single-item measures demonstrated comparable concurrent validity, and, with one exception, the reliability estimates were all above .70.

Sales Teams or Salespersons: Performance Implications for Embracing Individualistic and Collectivistic Cultural Values in a Global Marketplace

“…Multiple questions with similar required responses, such as groups of Likert-scaled responses, can lead to respondents answering each question in a similar way (Williams, Cote, & Buckley, 1989). Th us, high inter-item correlations can be caused more by common method variance than by the actual correlations with one another (Jordan & Turner, 2008). Single-item responses may also better measure global constructs (Jordan & Turner, 2008;Nagy, 2002).…”

“…Th us, high inter-item correlations can be caused more by common method variance than by the actual correlations with one another (Jordan & Turner, 2008). Single-item responses may also better measure global constructs (Jordan & Turner, 2008;Nagy, 2002). Take job satisfaction, for instance, which, as noted above, has several facets such as satisfaction with pay, supervision, working conditions, or opportunities for advancement.…”

“…Some organizational researchers believe that single-item measures should not be used and are inappropriate for at least a couple of reasons (Diener, 1984;Loo, 2002). First, singleitem measures do not allow for testing the inter-item correlations of items and calculating the related statistics such as coeffi cient alphas (Jordan & Turner, 2008), with longer scales leading higher reliabilities (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). Second, for constructs that have some breadth, a single item may not fully measure the whole construct (Bergkvist & Rossiter, 2007).…”

Thinking about the same things differently: Examining perceptions of a non-profit community sport organisation

“…We apply broader perceptions of the organisation as representative of Elsbach's (2003) definition of organisational image during the results and discussion. The validity of single-item measures has been endorsed, following comparisons with multi-item tests of the same construct (Jordan & Turner, 2008).…”

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“…Follow up notification has been reported to increase response rate for online survey (Dillman, 2000;Turner & Jordan, 2008). One week after the first email, followup emails with the same information in the first email were sent twice every other week.…”