Development and validation of the Spanish version of the political skill inventory: A measurement invariance test

Abstract

Background: The Political Skills Inventory (PSI) is a measurement tool for assessing four dimensions associated with political skills: social as-tuteness, interpersonal influence, networking ability and apparent sincerity (Ferris, Davidson & Perrewé, 2005). Method: In the present study, multi-sample and multi-method, we devel-oped and analyzed the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the (PSI), by performing both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses over two samples composed by employees from diverse professions for the first sample (collected through three waves, with values ranging be-tween Mage = 43.66 - 44.70, SD = 9.42 - 10.22 and 57.3 - 58.4% of wom-en) and a healthcare workforce for the second one (Mage = 35.56, SD = 7.23; 80.6% women). Additionally, a longitudinal reliability test and a gen-der factorial invariance test were performed. Results: Cronbach’s alpha (ranging between 0.83-0.90 in our data and be-tween 0.73-0.87 in the original version) and omega (0.85 for the overall scale) indices revealed satisfactory reliability and exploratory factor analyses extracted the four original factors as reported in other studies (N = 309). Confirmatory factorial analyses confirmed that the four-factor solution presented the best fit to our data (N = 248). Conclusions: We add new evidence for time and gender invariance of the measure, showing that the PSI can be considered a stable and valid meas-ure over time and across gender.