Dimensionality of the 9-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale revisited: A Bayesian structural equation modeling approach

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this study was to reexamine the dimensionality of the widely used 9-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale using the maximum likelihood (ML) approach and Bayesian structural equation modeling (BSEM) approach. Methods: Three measurement models (1-factor, 3-factor, and bi-factor models) were evaluated in two split samples of 1,112 health-care workers using confirmatory factor analysis and BSEM, which specified small-variance informative priors for cross-loadings and residual covariances. Model fit and comparisons were evaluated by posterior predictive p-value (PPP), deviance information criterion, and Bayesian information criterion (BIC). Results: None of the three ML-based models showed an adequate fit to the data. The use of informative priors for cross-loadings did not improve the PPP for the models. The 1-factor BSEM model with approximately zero residual covariances displayed a good fit (PPP > 0.10) to both samples and a substantially lower BIC than its 3-factor and bi-factor counterparts. Conclusions: The BSEM results demonstrate empirical support for the 1-factor model as a parsimonious and reasonable representation of work engagement.