Profiles of social skills, coping strategies, and perceived social support in mobbed workers

Abstract

The goal of this article was to analyze the social skills, coping strategies, and perceived social support in a multi-occupational sample of 2861 workers from the active Spanish population. For this purpose, we used a specific instrument to measure mobbing (NAQ-R), a questionnaire of sociodemographic and sociowork aspects, elaborated ad hoc, an instrument to measure social skills in the workplace, also elaborated ad hoc, a coping strategies scale (Brief COPE), and an instrument that assesses people’s perception of social support (MSPSS). A two-stage cluster analysis was performed, revealing two typologies of workers, which we called Type A or “non-mobbed workers” (n = 2147) and Type B or “mobbed workers” (n = 374). The results obtained indicate that the mobbed workers perceive less social support, display fewer social skills, and clearly use many kinds of coping strategies in comparison to the non-mobbed workers. Lastly, the implications and usefulness of the victimological profiles of the mobbed workers with regard to their social skills, coping strategies, and perceived social support are discussed.