Expanding on a conceptual model backed by previous research

Work engagement research was initially viewed as the positive antithesis of burnout. The Job Demands-Resources Model (JD-R Model) was proposed as a mechanism to examine the relationship between burnout and work engagement and their associated factors and effects. The validity of the JD-R model has been confirmed in many countries around the world, including the Netherlands and Spain.

According to the JD-R model, (1) people with high work engagement are less likely to experience burnout (the opposite of engagement), (2) work engagement has a positive impact on work performance, (3) job resources (learning opportunities and expectations of support from superiors and colleagues) increase work engagement, and (4) job demands (workload and lack of time) are not directly related to work engagement.

Among research conducted around the world, however, only a few have studied organizational culture, employee personalities (personal attributes), and worker productivity as factors that can impact work engagement and workplace environment. In view of this fact, we constructed our own model focused on “engagement” by removing the elements of burnout and stress reaction from the JD-R model, and adding instead the elements of organizational culture, personality, organizational citizenship behavior (discretionary effort put forth to help the organization and colleagues to reach objectives), and productivity.

Responses obtained from 1,000 individuals

With the help of a market research company, we obtained responses to our 608-question questionnaire from 1,000 individuals. However, we found that response quality was varied due to the high volume of questions. In order to solve this problem, we set a certain standard to judge the quality, and adopted 599 respondents’ standard cleared response data.

After standardizing the response data, we conducted a partial correlation analysis to check the intercorrelations among elements. The results confirmed that engagement is an important element in the relationship between an employee and their company of employment. (These results were presented at the Japan Industrial Management Association conference in 2017.)

Reducing the questionnaire from 608 to 43 questions

A questionnaire with 608 items is not so practical. Even if we narrowed it down to items related to the 10 factors we identified, more than 200 items would be remained. Cutting down to the bare minimum number was indispensable.

To do so, we performed I-T correlation analysis (Item-Total correlation expressing correlation between the score of an individual item and the overall score) that is used in the item response theory model. Specifically, we lined up the items that compose each factor in order of increasing I-T correlation, and calculated the correlation between the sum of the scores of the first and second items and the overall score, the correlation between the sum of the scores of the first, second and third items and the overall score, and so on, until we reached the number of items with a correlation coefficient of 0.95 or higher. A coefficient of 0.95 indicates that two sets of data are almost identical. By repeating this process, we were able to reduce the number of items to 43.

After that, we re-obtained response data from 1,000 individuals with the 43-item questionnaire and confirmed that the 10 factors could be reproduced through exploratory factor analysis.