Cross-cultural adaptation, from Dutch to Swedish language, of the Individual Work Performance Questionnaire

BACKGROUND: There is a need for a short, self-rated, validated and reliable instrument for individual work performance suitable for generic use in the Swedish work and organizational context. The Individual Work Performance Questionnaire (IWPQ), comprising originally 47 items, was initially developed in the Netherlands, based on a four-dimensional conceptual framework, in which individual work performance consisted of task performance, contextual performance, adaptive performance, and counterproductive work behavior. During the development process, IWPQ was shortened to 18 items with three scales formally labeled as Task performance, Contextual performance, and Counterproductive work behavior (CWB), capturing three work performance types. The current version of the IWPQ, consisting of 18 items and three scales, was then translated as well as cross-culturally adapted to American-English and Indonesian contexts. OBJECTIVES: To translate and adapt the current IWPQ version, consisting of 18 items, from the Dutch to the Swedish context, to assess its content validity through cognitive interviews, to apply it to a pilot group to present descriptive statistics, to calculate the questionnaire's internal consistency, as well as to clarify whether the translated items capture three or four performance types. METHODS: The Dutch version of the IWPQ, consisting of 18 items, was translated into Swedish. A six-stage translation and adaptation process was used: forward translation, synthesis, back translation, harmonization, cognitive interviews, revision, and sampling and analyses of pilot data for 206 managers (149 women) from five Swedish municipalities. RESULTS: IWPQ instructions, wording of a few items and one response form were slightly modified. The pilot testing showed Cronbach's alphas similar to the Dutch version of the IWPQ, ranging between 0.73 and 0.82, good mean-inter-item correlations (all above 0.36). In deciding how many factors to retain, we employed both parallel analysis (PA), and Velicer's minimum average partial (MAP) test. The number of factors to retain was, as indicated by PA, four, and by MAP, three or four. Exploratory factor analysis (principal axis factoring) revealed clearly separate factors, corresponding to four, rather than three, performance types. A new factor, roughly representing adaptive performance, comprised in the original, longer version of the IWPQ, emerged. CONCLUSIONS: The Swedish version of the IWPQ was successfully translated and adapted in a pilot group of managers. Before it is used, it should be validated in a larger group of managers and in more heterogeneous groups of both white- and blue-collar workers.