Development and validation of a questionnaire on informal workplace learning outcomes: A study among socio-educational care workers

Lifelong learning has become a necessity for individuals’ employability and a source of sustainable competitive advantage for organisations. Learning does not only occur through education and training, informal learning – learning from engagement in daily work-related activities - is considered an important source for establishing a sustainable change aimed at achieving individual and organisational goals. The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a measurement instrument of informal workplace learning outcomes focusing on socio-educational care workers. Due to their constantly changing profession, continuous learning has become a necessity. After the construction of the questionnaire on socio-educational care workers’ informal workplace learning outcomes, data were collected by means of an online questionnaire (N=1186). These data were randomly divided into two datasets. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the first dataset (n=593) to provide insight into the latent factors underpinning the questionnaire. Three factors were derived: generic, job specific and organisational level learning outcomes. Following, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on the second dataset (n=593) to validate the retrieved structure. The results reflect a good fit between the proposed three-factor model and the observed data. Future research perspectives within the field of social work are discussed.status: publishe