Scale library · HRM & organizational behavior
Perceived organizational support: Eisenberger (1986)
The SPOS measures employees' global beliefs about how far the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being. Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison and Sowa (1986) built a 36-item version and marked 16 items for a short form; this page gives that 16-item version. Following social exchange theory, employees who feel supported reciprocate with commitment, effort and lower turnover. It suits theses on commitment, engagement, turnover intention and organizational citizenship behavior.
Cite the original, not the blog.
- Model or scale: SPOS
- Constructs: 1
- Items: 16 (7 reverse-coded)
Original English items
Items marked (R) are reverse-coded: recode them before computing reliability or scale scores. Replace bracketed placeholders such as [system] with the name of the system, brand or organization you study.
Perceived Organizational Support (POS, 16 items)
| Code | Item wording | Reverse-coded |
|---|---|---|
| POS1 | The organization values my contribution to its well-being. | No |
| POS2 (R) | If the organization could hire someone to replace me at a lower salary it would do so. | Yes |
| POS3 (R) | The organization fails to appreciate any extra effort from me. | Yes |
| POS4 | The organization strongly considers my goals and values. | No |
| POS5 (R) | The organization would ignore any complaint from me. | Yes |
| POS6 (R) | The organization disregards my best interests when it makes decisions that affect me. | Yes |
| POS7 | Help is available from the organization when I have a problem. | No |
| POS8 | The organization really cares about my well-being. | No |
| POS9 (R) | Even if I did the best job possible, the organization would fail to notice. | Yes |
| POS10 | The organization is willing to help me when I need a special favor. | No |
| POS11 | The organization cares about my general satisfaction at work. | No |
| POS12 (R) | If given the opportunity, the organization would take advantage of me. | Yes |
| POS13 (R) | The organization shows very little concern for me. | Yes |
| POS14 | The organization cares about my opinions. | No |
| POS15 | The organization takes pride in my accomplishments at work. | No |
| POS16 | The organization tries to make my job as interesting as possible. | No |
Response scale
7-point agreement scale (1 = Strongly disagree … 7 = Strongly agree), as in Eisenberger et al. (1986). Reverse-score the flagged items before computing the mean.
Recoding reverse-coded items: 1–7 scale: new score = 1 + 7 − score = 8 − score; 1–5 scale: new score = 1 + 5 − score = 6 − score.
Licence and permission
The items are published in Table 1 of the original article in the Journal of Applied Psychology and widely used in research; we found no specific terms of use from the authors. Cite the original article.
Sources (APA 7)
- Do, H. P., & Le, T. H. (2026). Occupational stress, psychological resources, coping responses, and job satisfaction among healthcare workers in Ho Chi Minh City: A three-wave prospective cohort study. BMC Psychology, 14(1), 1398. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05279-7
- Duong, C. H., & Ho, Y.-H. (2024). Perceived organizational support and its impact on employee's intention to stay: Dataset from the electronics industry in Vietnam. Data in Brief, 54, 110428. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2024.110428
- Eisenberger, R., Huntington, R., Hutchison, S., & Sowa, D. (1986). Perceived organizational support. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71(3), 500–507. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.71.3.500
- Henseler, J., Ringle, C. M., & Sarstedt, M. (2015). A new criterion for assessing discriminant validity in variance-based structural equation modeling. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43(1), 115–135. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-014-0403-8
- Rhoades, L., & Eisenberger, R. (2002). Perceived organizational support: A review of the literature. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(4), 698–714. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.4.698
- Wang, C.-K., Duong, C. H., Ho, Y.-H., Do, D. L., Dang, Q. T., & Hoang, K. T. T. (2026). When support meets expectation: The negative moderating role of transformational leadership on nurses' intention to stay. SAGE Open Nursing, 12. https://doi.org/10.1177/23779608261442399
Vietnamese translation
A Vietnamese translation of every item, with sample-size advice and studies that used the scale, is on the Vietnamese page for this scale.