The quiet quitting scale: Development and initial validation

Petros Galanis; Aglaia Katsiroumpa; Irene Vraka; Olga Siskou; Olympia Konstantakopoulou; Ioannis Moisoglou; Parisis Gallos; Daphne Kaitelidou

doi:10.3934/publichealth.2023055

The quiet quitting scale: Development and initial validation

AIMS Public Health. 2023 Oct 17;10(4):828-848. doi: 10.3934/publichealth.2023055. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Petros Galanis¹, Aglaia Katsiroumpa¹, Irene Vraka², Olga Siskou³, Olympia Konstantakopoulou⁴, Ioannis Moisoglou⁵, Parisis Gallos⁶, Daphne Kaitelidou⁴

Affiliations

¹ Clinical Epidemiology Laboratory, Faculty of Nursing, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
² Department of Radiology, P. & A. Kyriakou Children's Hospital, Athens, Greece.
³ Department of Tourism Studies, University of Piraeus, Piraeus, Greece.
⁴ Center for Health Services Management and Evaluation, Faculty of Nursing, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
⁵ Faculty of Nursing, University of Thessaly, Larissa, Greece.
⁶ Faculty of Nursing, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.

Abstract

Introduction: COVID-19 pandemic causes drastic changes in workplaces that are likely to increase quite quitting among employees. Although quiet quitting is not a new phenomenon, there is no instrument to measure it.

Objective: To develop and validate an instrument assessing quiet quitting among employees.

Methods: We identified and generated items through an extensive literature review and interviews with employees. We carried out the content validity by content experts and we calculated the content validity ratio. We checked face validity by conducting cognitive interviews with employees and calculating the item-level face validity index. We conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to investigate the quiet quitting scale (QQS) factorial structure. We checked the concurrent validity of the QQS using four other scales, i.e., Copenhagen burnout inventory (CBI), single item burnout (SIB) measure, job satisfaction survey (JSS) and a single item to measure turnover intention. We estimated the reliability of the QQS measuring Cronbach's alpha, McDonald's omega, Cohen's kappa and intraclass correlation coefficient.

Results: After expert panel review and item analysis, nine items with acceptable corrected item-total correlations, inter-item correlations, floor and ceiling effects, skewness and kurtosis were retained. Exploratory factor analysis extracted three factors, namely detachment, lack of initiative and lack of motivation, with a total of nine items. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed this factorial structure for QQS. We found statistically significant correlations between QQS and CBI, SIB, JSS and turnover intention confirming that the concurrent validity of the QQS was great. Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega of the QQS were 0.803 and 0.806 respectively.

Conclusion: QQS, a three-factor nine-item scale, has robust psychometric properties. QQS is an easy-to-administer, brief, reliable and valid tool to measure employees' quiet quitting. We recommend the use of the QQS in different societies and cultures to assess the validity of the instrument.

Keywords: employees; instrument; quiet quitting; scale; validation.