Survey of Perceived Organizational Support (SPOS ) items are freely available for use by researchers and practitioners. The lead author of this measure, the late Dr. Robert Eisenberger, had POS items posted on his website and wanted them to be available for anyone’s use. Of course, please give credit wherever you use it by citing the appropriate reference.
10-item version of the Survey of Perceived Organizational Support (SPOS)
For more detail about scoring the SPOS and benchmarking, see the following reference.
Shanock, L. R., Eisenberger, R., Heggestad, E. D., Malone, G., Clark, L., *Dunn, A. M., Kirkland, J., & *Woznyj, H. (2019). Treating employees well: The value of organizational support theory in human resource management. The Psychologist-Manager Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/mgr0000088
“The original scale (36 items) was largely abandoned for the 18-item short form due to the practicality of using fewer items. It is now common to use eight or 10 items. Hellman, Fuqua, and Worley (2006) reported an average internal reliability (coefficient alpha) of .90 for studies using eight-item scales, dropping to .71 with three-item scales. We provide 10 items from the Survey of Perceived Orga- nizational Support (Eisenberger et al., 1986) for researchers and practitioners to use in their research or practice. The items are 10 highly loading items from the original 36-item scale that capture both halves of the POS definition (“valuing contributions” and “caring about well-being”). All 10 items are positively worded to avoid such problems as reduced internal consistency and multiple factor structures (Barnette, 2000; Swain, Weathers, & Niedrich, 2008).” p. 15
1=strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3=neither agree nor disagree, 4=agree, 5=strongly agree
OR
1=strongly disagree, 2=moderately disagree, 3=slightly disagree, 4=neither agree nor disagree, 5=slightly agree, 6=moderately agree, 7=strongly agree
(1) The organization values my contribution to its well-being.
(2) The organization strongly considers my goals and values.
(3) Help is available from the organization when I have a problem.
(4) The organization really cares about my well-being.
(5) My organization wishes to give me the best possible job for which I am qualified.
(6) The organization cares about my general satisfaction at work.
(7) The organization takes pride in my accomplishments at work.
(8) The organization would forgive an honest mistake on my part.
(9) The organization is willing to extend itself in order to help me perform my job to the best of my ability.
(10) The organization cares about my opinions.
“We recommend use of a 5- or 7-point Likert-type response scale as illustrated above. To score the scale if using a 7-point response scale for each item, assign a score of 1 to 7 to each person’s response for that item. Do the same for every item. Then add up the scores for all the items and divide by seven (i.e., calculate the average score among all the items).” p. 16
6-item version of the Survey of Perceived Organizational Support (SPOS)
If you desire a shorter version, here are 6 high-loading items from the original 36-item survey that have been widely used.
Perceived Organizational Support (6 items)
Commonly used, high-loading items From Eisenberger, R., Huntington, R., Hutchison, S., & Sowa, D. (1986). Perceived organizational support. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71, 500-507.
1. My work organization really cares about my well-being.
2. My work organization values my contributions to its well-being.
3. My work organization is willing to help me when I need a special favor.
4. My work organization shows little concern for me.
5. My work organization takes pride in my accomplishments at work.
6. My work organization strongly considers my goals and values.