Objective To assess and compare the prevalence of workplace bullying among staff of commercial enterprises and health service institutes.
Methods A total of 847 employees in two commercial buildings and 146 employees at one community health service center were invited to a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire contained general demographic information, job characteristics, and workplace bullying. Workplace bullying was assessed by self-labeling method (participants were given a single-item question that whether or not they had been bullied within recent 6 months) and by behavioral experience method using Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) (participants were asked to report how frequently they had been exposed to various behaviors listed in the inventory within recent 6 months).
Results Totally 397 (46.87%) and 89 (60.96%) valid copies of questionnaires were retrieved from the two populations respectively. The Cronbach's alpha coefficients of NAQ-R were 0.978 and 0.965 respectively. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient between the total NAQ-R score and the self-labeling score was r=0.494 (P<0.001). Regarding workplace bullying, 23.0% and 14.6% of the employees reported being exposed to bullying in the commercial buildings and the community health service center respectively. According to the NAQ-R, however, the prevalence of bullying in the commercial buildings (13.1%) was higher than that in the health service center (5.6%) (P<0.001).
Conclusion More serious workplace bullying problems are found in the commercial enterprises than in the health service institutes.
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