A construct validity study of the Survey of Perceived Organizational Support.

measure of perceived employer commitment that they called the Survey of Perceived Organiza-tional Support (SPOS). In the present study, confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the dimensionality of the SPOS and to determine the distinctiveness of this construct from other similar constructs. Participants were 330 employees in a large corporation headquartered in the southeastern United States. The results support the SPOS as a unidimensional scale that is distin-guishable from affective and continuance commitment. However, the data raise some question as to the empirical distinction between the SPOS and satisfaction. A great deal of research has been conducted on the concept of organizational commitment (Mowday, Porter, Steers, 1982). Many other commitment concepts have been proposed and researched as well (Morrow, 1983), such as job involvement (Lodahl Kejner, 1965; Kanungo, 1979), career salience (Greenhaus, 1971), union commitment (Gordon, Philpot, Burt, Thompson, Spiller, 1980), and occupational commitment (Vandenberg Scarpello, 1988). Each of these attitudes focuses on the individuals attachment to a particular aspect of the work situation, such as a job, union, or organization. What has been less thoroughly studied are employee perceptions of employer commitment to the individual (i.e., perceived organizational support).