PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S THESIS ABSTRACT

Dwayne Thompson

Industrial/Organizational
December 1995

The Need for Support Scale: A Construct Validity Study

    Hutchison developed a scale designed to measure the intensity of an employee’s need to be accepted and valued by the organization that he called the Need for Support Scale.  The rationale underlying the development of the scale is based on the assumption that the employee can indicate the degree to which perceived organizational support is indicative of the dominant need states within the employee.  In the present study, 162 employees at a California community college completed a survey which included the Need for Support Scale (NSpt) and the Manifest Needs Questionnaire (MNQ).  Results provided partial support for the NSpt scale measuring the dominant need state: For employees with dominant needs for achievement and affiliation, significant correlations were shown between the NSpt scale and the MNQ.  This relationship was nonexistent for employees whose need for achievement or need for affiliation was nondominant.

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