Work addiction among bank employees in Italy: A contribution to validation of the Bergen Work Addiction Scale with a focus on measurement invariance across gender and managerial status

Abstract

This study contributes to the validation of the Bergen Work Addiction Scale (BWAS) in the Italian context, with a focus on measurement invariance across gender and managerial status. The BWAS is a consolidated measure of work addiction (WA) anchored in general addiction theory that comprises seven items representing the core addiction components. Participants were 8419 bank workers (37.7% women, 12.9% managers) who completed a self-report questionnaire including the Italian version of the BWAS (BWAS-I) and the Dutch Work Addiction Scale, as well as measures of work engagement, perfectionism, workload, psycho-physical symptoms, work–family conflict, and job satisfaction. Results confirmed the single-factor structure of the BWAS-I. Partial scalar invariance held across gender and managerial status, meaning that most—but not all—item intercepts were equivalent across different populations. Furthermore, the BWAS-I showed adequate convergent, discriminant, criterion-related, and incremental validity. This study showed that the BWAS-I is a valuable instrument that can be used by researchers and practitioners to assess WA in the Italian context.