Help! We need a measure: Developing and evaluating a Multidimensional Coworker Support Scale (MCSS).

Despite widespread interest in coworker support, the scales typically used to measure the construct fail to capture its multifaceted nature. Answering calls from previous research (Jolly et al., 2021), the purpose of this research was to develop a Multidimensional Coworker Support Scale (MCSS) with strong psychometric properties. Based on previous research and theory, the MCSS is designed to capture the form (available vs. received), type (emotional vs. instrumental), and helpfulness (helpful vs. unhelpful) of coworker support. Spector's (1992) five-stage process was followed to create and evaluate the MCSS: (a) define construct, (b) design scale, (c) pilot test, (d) administration and item analysis, and (e) validation and norming. These stages (NTotal = 1,695) resulted in a 32-item, eight-dimensional scale with four items per subscale, which has strong evidence of reliability and validity. Providing evidence of content validity, subject matter experts sorted the items into their respective factors with high agreement. The factors are generally related to other measures as expected, providing convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity evidence. The MCSS generally explained additional variance in outcome measures over and above previous measures of coworker support. The eight-factor structure of the MCSS replicated and fit the data significantly better than seven alternative models across six samples of employees. The MCSS also generally had strong measurement consistency over 2 weeks. These findings have important implications for theory and practice, offering a robust tool that enables more precise measurement of coworker support. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).