Development and Validation of the Spanish Version of the Political Skill Inventory: A Measurement Invariance Test

Abstract: Background: The Political Skills Inventory (PSI) is a measurement tool for assessing four dimensions associated with political skills: social astuteness, interpersonal influence, networking ability and apparent sincerity (Ferris, Davidson & Perrewé, 2005). Method: In the present study, multi-sample and multi-method, we developed and analyzed the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the (PSI), by performing both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses over two samples composed by employees from diverse professions for the first sample (collected through three waves, with values ranging between Mage = 43.66 - 44.70, SD = 9.42 - 10.22 and 57.3 - 58.4% of women) and a healthcare workforce for the second one (Mage = 35.56, SD = 7.23; 80.6% women). Additionally, a longitudinal reliability test and a gender factorial invariance test were performed. Results: Cronbach's alpha (ranging between 0.83-0.90 in our data and between 0.73-0.87 in the original version) and omega (0.85 for the overall scale) indices revealed satisfactory reliability and exploratory factor analyses extracted the four original factors as reported in other studies (N = 309). Confirmatory factorial analyses confirmed that the four-factor solution presented the best fit to our data (N = 248). Conclusions: We add new evidence for time and gender invariance of the measure, showing that the PSI can be considered a stable and valid measure over time and across gender.