The Work Locus of Control Scale (WLCS) is a 16 item instrument designed to assess control beliefs in the workplace, that is, whether a person believes he or she is able to control events at work or whether control resides in others. It is a domain specific locus of control scale, that correlates about .50 to .55 with general locus of control. The scale is scored so that externals receive high scores. Details of scale development can be found in Spector (1988) and Spector (1992). The 1988 article is the appropriate citation for the scale.
Details about what the scale relates to can be found in a meta-analysis by Wang, Bowling, and Eschleman (2010).
WLCS 8-item shortform English. In response to requests for a shorter form of the scale. The item choice was based on item-remainders and the final coefficient alpha. The short version consists of items 2, 3, 5, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16. In our CISMS1 study, coefficient alpha for Anglo countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, US) was .86 for the 16-item version and .81 for the 8-item version (n = 1170). Alphas were lower for the scale in Asia and some other nonEnglish speaking countries.
Note: The WLCS is copyright © 1988, Paul E. Spector, All rights reserved.