Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a measure of occupational embeddedness.

Design/methodology/approach

The construct of occupational embeddedness was defined in terms of the forces that bind people to their occupation. Then a four-part study was conducted to develop a measure of it.

Findings

In Part 1, items were developed and judgmental evidence for their content validity was generated. In Part 2 the initial psychometric characteristics were examined. The results supported the internal consistency reliability and factor structure of the measure. In Part 3, Part 2 was replicated and showed that occupational embeddedness had a negative relationship to occupational withdrawal intentions. In Part 4 a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to demonstrate that occupational embeddedness was distinguishable from occupational commitment. The paper also found that occupational embeddedness was correlated with occupational commitment but not social desirability. In addition, the paper found that it accounted for incremental variance in occupational withdrawal intentions beyond occupational commitment.

Research limitations/implications

Limitations include the fact that occupational withdrawal intentions rather than actual behaviors were measured. Overall, the results suggest that the new measure has sound psychometric qualities, and adequate discriminant, convergent and predictive validity. The paper concludes that use of the measure may contribute to the prediction/understanding of career withdrawal.

Originality/value

A new measure of a construct that may be used to complement existing research and measures of work-role attachment was developed.