The German Workplace FoMO Scale: A psychometrically valid instrument for assessing Workplace Fear of Missing Out among German‐Speaking professionals

Résumé fourni par la source

Abstract Fear of Missing Out at work (wFoMO) has emerged as a salient phenomenon in today's digitalized workplaces. Reflecting employees' apprehensions about missing critical information vital for one's task or work performance and the fear of missing opportunities to build or strengthen professional relationships and networks, respectively, wFoMO is increasingly recognized as a factor that impairs employee well‐being and functioning. Although a validated English wFoMO scale exists since its publication by Budnick and colleagues in 2020, validated translations into other languages remain scarce or inaccessible. We translated the English‐language Fear of Missing Out at Work Scale through a rigorous forward–backward translation procedure into German, and examined its psychometric properties in two independent samples of working professionals (N = 813; 48% male, 51% female, mean age = 40.9 years). Following established test adaptation guidelines, we conducted confirmatory factor analyses, reliability assessments, and measurement invariance tests across work settings and time, tested relations with theoretically adjacent variables (telepressure, availability expectations, self‐regulation, and computer user self‐efficacy), and scrutinized testing consequences concerning well‐being impairments (mental fatigue). The German Workplace Fear of Missing Out Scale (wFoMO‐G) demonstrated strong psychometric properties, a stable two‐factor structure, high internal consistency, measurement invariance for workplace settings and time, and meaningful nomological links, supporting its applications as a psychometrically robust measurement tool for use in future research on wFoMO's antecedents, impact, and generalizability across occupational groups and work contexts among German‐speaking professionals.

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