Toxic Leadership Scale Development in Hospitality Sector and Scale Item-Bias Analysis

The aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable toxic leadership scale for the hospitality sector. The research was carried out on two sample groups of employees working in four- and five-star hotels in Alanya, Turkey. Both groups have similar characteristics. There were 336 participants in the first sample group and 623 participants in the second sample group. In order to test the construct validity of the toxic leadership scale, an exploratory factor analysis and 27% sub-upper group comparisons were performed on the first sample group's data. A confirmatory factor analysis and a differential item functioning analysis were performed on the second sample group's data. The reliability of the scale was tested. From the analysis of the psychometric properties of the toxic leadership scale it was determined that the scale has high construct validity and reliability.