Reliability and Construct Validity of the Portuguese Version of the Psychological Capital Questionnaire

Abstract

The Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ) is the most commonly used measure for assessing psychological capital in work settings. Although several studies confirmed its factorial validity, most validation studies only examined the four-factor structure preconized by Luthans, Youssef, and Avolio, not attending to empirical evidence on alternative factorial structures. The present study aimed to test the psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of the PCQ, by using two independent samples (NS1 = 542; NS2 = 115) of Portuguese employees. We conducted a series of confirmatory factor analyses and found that, unlike previous findings, a five-factor solution of the PCQ best fitted the data. The evidence obtained also supported the existence of a second-order factor, psychological capital. The coefficients of internal consistency, as measured by Cronbach's alpha, were adequate and test-retest reliability suggested that the PCQ presented a lower stability than personality factors. Convergent validity, assessed with average variance extracted, revealed problems in the optimism subscale. The discriminant validity of the PCQ was confirmed by its correlations with Positive and Negative Affect and Big Five personality factors. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that this measure has incremental validity over personality and affect when predicting job performance.

Filter Variable Selection Algorithm Using Risk Ratios for Dimensionality Reduction of Healthcare Data for Classification

“…This dataset carries psychological capital (PsyCap) information of some workers in the hospitality industry. Psychological capital measures the capabilities of an individual that enable them to excel in the work environment [31]. Each worker's PsyCap was assessed on the four components of psychological capital (hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism), using the questionnaire presented in [32].…”

Psychological capital, task autonomy and innovative work behaviour among public organisation employees

“…The scale items were phrased to reflect work-setting measure of four types (hope, optimism self-efficacy and resilience) of capital, and each of the capital had six items each. This scale has been adopted in studies that represent many nations and cultures and has been translated into a few languages (Antunes et al, 2017). Cetin and Basim's (2012) confirmatory factor analysis on the scale yielded satisfactory results in terms of structure, reliability and validity.…”

Evidencias psicométricas sobre la validez y fiabilidad del cuestionario de capital psicológico (PCQ-12) en población mexicana

“…However, this work exclusively used a sample of executive directors of companies. Some researchers advocate the importance of delving into the psychometric properties of the instrument, to broaden the discussion on this construct's behavior in different sectors and cultures (Antunes, Caetano, & Pina e Cunha, 2017;Dawkins, Martin, Scott, & Sanderson, 2013). Derived from the above, the objective of this work was to study the psychometric properties of the Psychological Capital Questionnaire-12 (PCQ-12) in a sample of Mexican workers and verify if the assumption of a high-order construct is observed.…”

“…Future research should analyze the convergent and discriminant validity of positive psychological capital with respect to other constructs (Antunes et al, 2017). Another line of research would be the use of longitudinal studies with antecedent variables that may influence this construct (e.g., demographic variables and variables linked to the job context) as suggested by Avey (2014).…”