A psychometric evaluation of the Opening Minds Scale for Workplace Attitudes (OMS-WA), a measure of public stigma towards mental illnesses in the workplace

The anti-stigma Opening Minds initiative (Mental Health Commission of Canada) identified the workplace as one of four critical areas for stigma evaluation and programming. Researchers found, however, that no validated tool to measure stigma in this context existed at the time. The purpose of the current research was to develop and assess the psychometric properties of a multi-component quantitative measure of public stigma towards mental illnesses in the workplace: Opening Minds Scale for Workplace Attitudes (OMS-WA). Three studies are discussed. Study 1 outlines the initial development of the OMS-WA, finding a five-factor structure with 23 items (EFA analysis; N = 207). Study 2 utilized employees from various businesses to further validate the OMS-WA, (N = 107), finding good internal consistency and good convergent/divergent validity. Study 3 utilized baseline data from two national large-scale stigma reduction and resiliency programs (first responders and general workplaces) to confirm the factor structure, finding good model fit and reliability with both samples (N = 5385; N = 1207). Together, these results provide strong evidence of the OMS-WA. Its use in measuring workplace stigma related to mental illness is recommended. Considerable future evaluation is warranted, and directions for generalizability studies, as well as suggestions for using the OMS-WA in intervention trials, are provided.