Applicant reactions to selection: Development of the Selection Procedural Justice Scale (SPJS)

This paper describes research that fills a void in the applicant reactions literature by developing a comprehensive measure of Gilliland's (1993) proc edural justice rules, called the Selection Procedural Justice Scale (SPJS). Five separate phases of scale development were conducted. In Phase 1 we ge nerated and refined the items. For Phase 2 we reduced the items through exp loratory factor analysis using data gathered from 330 applicants for the jo b of court officer and found higher-order factors consistent with Greenberg (1993a, 1993b). In Phase 3 we confirmed the factor structure using a separ ate sample of 242 applicants and trainees for the court officer job. In Pha se 4 we assessed the initial convergent and divergent validity of the scale . In Phase 5 we tested the generalizability of these items in general and f or those receiving positive and negative selection outcomes using 2 student samples. The results demonstrated the usefulness of the SPJS in differenti ating each of Gilliland's procedural justice rules and relating them to out comes included in his model of applicant reactions. A copy of the SPJS is i ncluded in the Appendix.