ABSTRACT
Background of the Study The first survey to establish the presence of interpersonal bullying at work in India, using the Work Harassment Scale (WHS) (Bjorkqvist and Osterman 1992), was undertaken in the Indian ITES-BPO sector by D’Cruz and Rayner in 2009 (D’Cruz and Rayner 2010). The WHS provides a set of 24 questions concerning the experience of negative behaviours at work and asks respondents to recall the frequency (if any) with which they have encountered such treatment during the previous six months. It allows for bullying to be measured via behavioural experiences rather than subjective interpretations. In so doing, it counters the possibility of people continuing to suffer the harm associated with bullying due to their personal defi nitions of their experiences (Einarsen et al. 2011a; Hoel, Faragher and Cooper 2004). Recognizing that the WHS embodies this important feature and hence affords the opportunity to gain more accurate insights, D’Cruz and Rayner (2010) chose to use this scale in their survey. The WHS was used in its original form, as the population it was administered to was fl uent in English and issues of item interpretation on account of language did not arise.
