Organizational Commitment Questionnaire

OCQ

social sciencespsychologyFree for research use

Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no licence fee. Cite the original publication.

A 15-item measure of affective organizational commitment: belief in the organization's goals, willingness to exert effort, and desire to maintain membership.

Items

Response format

7-point Likert

Version

1.0

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Organizational commitment was measured with the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ; Mowday et al., 1979), a 15-item measure with excellent internal consistency (α ≈ .90).

Citing this in a methods section? See the APA 7 guide (Author–date citations for psychology and the social sciences). Or compare all six citation styles.

Run OCQ in Folio Surveyor

Folio has verified the citation and methods for this scale, not its item wording, so Surveyor cannot add the items for you. It starts a study named for OCQ, with room for its 15 items; you add each item from the published source.

Start a study

Save OCQ Cite OCQ in a new doc

Reliability & validation

Validation population

2,563 employees in nine organizations (Mowday et al., 1979)

Cronbach's α

0.9

Response anchors

Strongly disagree · Moderately disagree · Slightly disagree · Neither agree nor disagree · Slightly agree · Moderately agree · Strongly agree

Known limitations

Captures affective commitment only and overlaps conceptually with turnover intention (several items ask directly about leaving); later three-component models separate affective, continuance and normative commitment.

Original citation

Mowday, R. T., Steers, R. M., & Porter, L. W. (1979). The measurement of organizational commitment. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14(2), 224-247.

https://doi.org/10.1016/0001-8791(79)90072-1

Questions researchers ask

What does the OCQ measure?

A 15-item measure of affective organizational commitment: belief in the organization's goals, willingness to exert effort, and desire to maintain membership.

How many items does the OCQ have?

The Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) has 15 items.

Is the OCQ free to use?

The OCQ is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Is the OCQ reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.9. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the OCQ, and how do I cite it?

Mowday, R. T., Steers, R. M., & Porter, L. W. (1979). The measurement of organizational commitment. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14(2), 224-247. https://doi.org/10.1016/0001-8791(79)90072-1

Or track new research mentioning OCQ as it publishes

Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference; item wording is available inside Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing.