A contribution to the adaptation of Italian versions of the violence scale, fear scale, perceived coping ability and perceived organizational scale

Workplace Violence is one of the most important hazards in nowadays organization and physic violence is a serious work issues for 4% of European workers {EU-OSHA 2005). Our study is focused on violence, fear of future violence and workers ‘perception of organizational prevention about job violence {Rogers & Kelloway 1997; Mueller & Tschan 2011). There is an urgent need of a integrated organizational approach to prevent violence and it may be useful comparing data from different countries. In Italy the assessment of workplace violence is especially important because of its high incidence in financial context (CISL 2014), where robberies are at the highest levels in Europe (the half part of the robberies of the whole EU). This study aims at translating Kelloway and colleague’s scale (Rogers & Kelloway 1997; Schat & Kelloway 2000; Le Blanc & Kelloway 2002; Schat & Kelloway 2003) about violence and fear, and Mueller and Tschan's scale (2011) about perceived organizational prevention (POP) of violence; and adapting the scales for an Italian context. 100 Italian bank-tellers constitute the database of our study. A process of translation has been made within the help of bilingual experts and after the approval of back translation of the authors. A Cronbach analysis and exploratory factorial analysis (EFA) have been made in order to assess reliability and dimensionality. An analysis of validity is recommended made by correlating the perception of violence and organizational prevention with criteria -as number of robberies experienced, or presence of prevention measures, unfortunately the management did not provide these data. The EFA confirms two factors for violence (direct, vicarious), one factor for fear and one factor for POP. The reliability analyses are all satisfactory. Future implications for practice are discussed.