Abstract
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has one primary objective, which is to provide
all employees with decent work (Moodley & Cohen, 2012). Decent work is defined as “work
in which both men and women are productive and of freedom, equity, security and human
dignity are part of the working conditions” (ILO, 2008, pp. 2). The five main components of
decent work include, a workplace that is both physically and interpersonally safe, hours that
allow for downtime, organisational values that support social and family values, fair
compensation and access to health care (Duffy et al., 2017). Regarding decent work in the
South African context, there is a lack of research on this topic. Since cultural differences have
been demonstrated to alter responses to items on particular psychometric measures, South
Africa has not yet established or validated a decent work measure. Therefore, it is crucial to
determine an instrument's psychometric compatibility before using it on the diverse population
of the country. This study investigates a decent work measure's validity and reliability in a
South African context; particularly, a South African sample is used to look at the
dimensionality of the Western-developed decent work scale (DWS). A sample of 460 working
adults from South Africa was used in a quantitative, cross-sectional study. The initial fivefactor
DWS structure was supported by the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and exploratory
factor analysis (EFA) results. Future research suggestions and limitations are also discussed.
Keywords: decent work, decent work scale (DWS), validity, factor analysis