Methodology

Fivesay measures workplace satisfaction through 10 drivers grounded in established constructs from organizational psychology. Everything is on the table here: where the model comes from, how the scale works, what is verified — and what isn't yet.

Honesty first: Fivesay's items are authored to survey-design best practice on established constructs — but they have not yet been psychometrically validated. We will publish reliability statistics here as soon as the dataset allows (see “Validation roadmap”).

The 10 drivers and the science behind them

Driver	Construct & source
Autonomy	Autonomy need — Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan); Influence at work (COPSOQ III)
Workload	Job demands — Job Demands-Resources model (Bakker & Demerouti); Quantitative demands (COPSOQ III)
Recognition	Recognition — effort-reward imbalance (Siegrist); Recognition (COPSOQ III)
Growth	Development — Possibilities for development (COPSOQ III)
Management	Supervisor support — Quality of leadership (COPSOQ III); Support (HSE MS)
Teamwork	Relatedness (SDT); Sense of community (COPSOQ III)
Communication	Communication and psychological safety (Edmondson 1999); Predictability (COPSOQ III)
Purpose	Meaningful work — Meaning of work (COPSOQ III)
Wellbeing	Recovery and balance — Stress, Work-life conflict (COPSOQ III)
Work environment	Working conditions — job resources (JD-R)

The scale

Answers use a 5-point faces scale with text labels. Pictorial scales of this kind have a long history in job-attitude measurement (Kunin Faces Scale, 1955). One item per driver per pulse is supported by research on single-item validity (Wanous et al. 1997), and the rotation accumulates breadth over time. All items are positively keyed — a deliberate design decision for fast mobile answering, documented here rather than hidden.

Anonymity as mathematics

No names, emails, IP addresses or device data are stored with answers. Results only unlock once at least 5 people have answered, and then update only in steps of 5 — a single new answer can never be isolated. Comments appear in random order without scores or timestamps.

Validation roadmap

At 300 revealed responses: reliability (Cronbach's α) per driver and item-total correlations, published here.
At 1,000 revealed responses: per-driver benchmarks, published here.
At 5,000 revealed responses: measurement equivalence across Icelandic, English and Polish.
An organizational psychologist's review of wording and translations is planned before the Pro launch.

Item changelog

July 2026: wording of five items revised (workload_3, wellbeing_2, environment_1, growth_1, mgr_5) to remove frequency words and double-barreled statements. Item ids are unchanged so over-time comparisons remain valid.

Sources

Burr, Berthelsen et al. (2019). The Third Version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ III). Safety and Health at Work. Nordic validations: Norway (PLOS One, 2023), Sweden (IJERPH, 2020).
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly.
Deci, E. & Ryan, R. — Self-Determination Theory. Bakker, A. & Demerouti, E. (2007). The Job Demands-Resources model. Journal of Managerial Psychology.
Kunin, T. (1955). The Construction of a New Type of Attitude Measure. Personnel Psychology.
Wanous, J., Reichers, A. & Hudy, M. (1997). Overall job satisfaction: How good are single-item measures? Journal of Applied Psychology.
UK Health and Safety Executive — Management Standards Indicator Tool.
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