Opening organizational archives to research: Analog measures of organizational commitment

This research applied the construct equivalence approach for deriving and empirically validating analog measures based on data not originally designed to measure the theoretical constructs of interest. In this application, subject matter experts agreed on questionnaire items from a longitudinal database, that fit Meyer and Allen's (1991) definitions of affective and continuance commitment. Questionnaires suitable for inclusion of these items and the original Meyer and Allen (1984) items were administered to a test sample of Army officers (N = 404). Analyses supported use of the selected items as analog scales of affective and continuance commitment in that both the selected and original items yielded similar factor structures and similar relations with officer rank and career intentions. Results for the analog items were replicated with another officer sample (N= 863). The contributions of the findings to the organizational commitment literature and research in the military are discussed.