Workplace AI Trust: Scale Development, Preliminary Psychometric Validation, and Associations with Employee AI Experience

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in work, there is a need to understand employees’ beliefs about whether it can be relied upon in occupational settings. This study developed an eight-item Workplace AI Trust Scale and examined its preliminary measurement properties and associations with workplace AI experience. Polish working adults completed an online questionnaire, and separate randomly selected subsamples were used for exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The findings supported a common factor underlying the trust items and their empirical distinction from a supplementary distrust block. Internal consistency was high, although model fit was not uniformly favorable across all analyses. Changes in scaled fit indices provided qualified support for equal thresholds and loadings across exposure groups, although concerns about configural fit remained. Direct AI use was positively associated with trust, whereas the association with usage frequency was less consistent across analytical specifications. The reported presence of an organizational AI policy showed no statistically significant association with trust. Including the trust score improved average classification performance for AI-use frequency, but overall predictive performance remained limited. The findings support further investigation of the scale as a research instrument, while leaving its external convergent validity, broader discriminant validity, and suitability for group comparisons to be established.