Is the Technostress Creators Inventory Still an Up-To-Date Measurement Instrument? Results of a Large-Scale Interview Study

Self-report measures are of great importance for technostress research and particularly the Technostress Creators Inventory has been amongst the most frequently applied measurement instruments since its inception in 2008. As the technological environment has progressed since then, we investigated whether this inventory still completely represents the phenomenon of technostress today. We conducted interviews with 75 individuals in four companies on their technostress experiences. We asked them about their personal experiences with eight stressor categories in the workplace, the original five dimensions of the Technostress Creators Inventory (techno-overload, techno-invasion, techno-complexity, techno-insecurity, and techno-uncertainty) and additional three categories (techno-unreliability, IT-based monitoring, and cyberbullying). We found that techno-insecurity was the least prevalent stressor category throughout all companies, while techno-unreliability, one of our new categories, was the most prevalent stressor. Based on this evidence, we argue that a revised inventory is urgently needed to guarantee content validity of technostress measurement in future studies.