The Work Regulatory Focus Scale: Turkish Adaptation Study

According to regulatory focus theory, two types of focus, namely, promotion and prevention, regulate goal-directed behavior. The promotion focus is related to development needs such as progress, growth, and achievement, and those of promotion-focused individuals are goals, hopes, ideals, and aspirations. Alternatively, prevention focus is related to protection needs such as safety, security, and responsibility, and the goals of prevention-focused individuals are duties, obligations, and requirements. Although many fields have examined the theory for many years, the literature points out its effect on work attitudes in the previous years. In the local context, a Turkish scale that addresses the concept of regulatory focus does not exist. To fill this research gap, the current study aims to adapt the Work Regulatory Focus Scale (Neubert et al., 2008) into Turkish and examined its psychometric properties. After translation, two studies were conducted to test the fitness of the psychometric properties of the scale. Study 1 was conducted on 260 employees to test the construct validity of the scale, to perform exploratory factor analysis, and to examine the relationship of the factors with one another and with employee voice. Study 2 recruited 157 employees, performed confirmatory factor analysis, and focused on the relationship with risk taking to test construct validity. Both studies calculated for the internal consistency coefficient. Analysis in Study 1 indicated a two-factor structure composed of prevention and promotion, which is consistent with the original scale. The result of correlation analysis suggested significant relationships between prevention and promotion focuses and between prohibitive and promotive voices. In addition, the findings of Study 2 supported the two-factor structure, and the study noted a significant correlation of promotion and prevention focuses with risk-taking tendency. The reliability analysis in Studies 1 and 2 produced internal consistency coefficients of.91 and.93 for prevention and.85 and.87 for promotion factor, respectively. The findings provided various evidence for the validity of the Turkish form of the scale and the reliability of the measurement.