Work Engagement in the It Sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Psychometric Evaluation of the Shortened Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9)

Aldina Leto, Mirna Marković, Dženana Husremović

Abstract


The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the shortened version of the Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9) on a sample of employees in the IT sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The research was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, a pilot study was carried out on a sample of 116 participants, where item analysis, reliability analysis, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were applied. All items demonstrated adequate psychometric characteristics, with item-total correlations ranging from .586 to .830. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was .92, indicating high internal consistency of the scale. The results of the exploratory factor analysis revealed a single dominant factor that explained 61.37% of the total variance, supporting the unidimensional structure of the scale.In the second phase of the study, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted on a sample of 334 participants (excluding those from the pilot study). The CFA confirmed a good fit of the one-factor model (CMIN/df = 1.647; CFI = .986; TLI = .980; RMSEA = .063), and all items showed statistically significant and high standardized factor loadings (β = .53 to .94).The findings confirm that the shortened version of the Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9) is a reliable and valid measure of work engagement in the context of the IT sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Consistent with the previous findings of Schaufeli and Bakker (2004), the results support the use of UWES-9 as a unidimensional measure of work engagement, which further contributes to its practical application in organizational psychology.

Keywords


UWES-9; work engagement; IT sector; psychometric evaluation

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.51558/2490-3647.2025.10.2.1053

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