Development of a shortened version of the Latent and Manifest Benefits of Work (LAMB) scale

Paid work offers latent benefits (e.g., social contact, time structure) that go beyond mere access to financial resources in predicting individuals' psychological well-being. Despite the importance of the concept for organizational research and practice, available instruments measuring these latent benefits suffer either from psychometric deficiencies or from a scale length that makes integrating them into largescale work/life surveys cumbersome. Thus, the current two studies (N = 1,054 and N = 677) report on the development of the Short Latent and Manifest Benefits of Work scale (LAMB-S; cf. Muller, Creed, Waters, & Machin, 2005). The new 18-item instrument showed a clear factor structure, appropriate external validities, and even slight improvements in content and criterion validity for some subscales. Overall, the LAMB-S represents an economical instrument with satisfactory psychometric properties, making it an attractive alternative in situations where participant time is limited.