Construction of the Emotional Salary Barometer for small and medium-sized companies: structure and psychometric validity

Abstract

The objective of this study is to construct, structure and psychometrically validate the Emotional Salary Barometer for SMEs (BASE-SMEs) based on a theoretical model of two factors (causal and consequential) and a series of dimensions and subdimensions that contain a battery of items. which are measured in two types of scales (Likert and semantic differential), both scored from 1 to 7. Content validity, measured with Aiken's V, confirms 92.05% agreement between judges regarding the criteria clarity, objectivity, and coherence. The piloting yields adequate levels of internal consistency with α values between 0.81 and 0.93 and corrected test item correlation between 0.47 and 0.84. It was applied to 385 SME employees, whose responses allowed discriminant analysis to be carried out using the t-student test (t) and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (extraction of principal components and varimax rotation). The t test reveals that there are significant differences between the scores of Group A (managers) and Group B (operatives); while the adequacy of the sample size suggests the relevance of the EFA (KMO=0.91, significant Bartlett sphericity and anti-image correlation matrix with values between 0.85 and 0.96). The communalities fluctuate between 0.62 and 0.85, emerging a structure that partially confirms the proposed model that explains 69.57% of the variance. The BASE-PYMES is made up of 45 items, distributed in 6 dimensions and 10 sub-dimensions, representing a theoretical, methodological, and practical contribution that contributes to mitigating the poor diffusion of the construct and proposes an instrument to diagnose perceptual assessments regarding the conditions environmental and labor relations, psychosocial state, and emotional well-being of employees.