40 Years of Job Insecurity: A Review of Research Designs and Scales of Measurement

We reviewed the past 40 years of job insecurity research, focusing on research designs and measurement practices in the field. Our review included 1000 papers published between 1984 and late 2023: we found that job insecurity research is overwhelmingly quantitative in nature (mirroring more significant trends in organisational psychology) and seemed to be moving towards an increased use of longitudinal designs. We also reviewed most job insecurity scales: we found that evidence supporting the continued use of a significant proportion of scales is lacking, as only a few scales underwent analyses beyond simple factorial analytical models. We conclude by making several recommendations to strengthen the credibility of job insecurity research and outlining several remaining methodological issues that should be investigated in the future. These include (i) aligning the conceptualisation of job insecurity and the chosen design (e.g., cross-sectional vs cross-lagged vs longitudinal); (ii) using well-validated scales for which there is substantial evidence of their validity and psychometric properties instead of ad hoc scales; (iii) the opportunity of measuring job insecurity using single-item scales; (iv) measuring uncertainty and lack of certainty, as well as its implications for score interpretation; (v) the need for more qualitative and mixed-method designs; and (vi) the dangers of administering scales that require higher reading levels to workers that do not have a high reading ability.