The portability of American job involvement and job satisfaction scales to non-English speaking South Africans

Abstract

The scales discussed in Boshoff and Hoole (above) were applied to a sample of non-English mother tongue speakers in South Africa to test their "portability" between America and South Africa. Where more than one possible structure was obtained, they were compared by means of confirmatory factor analysis. To reduce error variance and improve goodness of fit indices, items were aggregated by taking the mean of random item clusters, and the confirmatory factor analyses repeated. The best fit solution for each of the scales was identified and discussed. Indications are that both the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire and the Kanungo Job Involvement Scale can be used with confidence in South Africa, even on respondents who are not home language English speakers.