Dutch Boredom Scale

Workplace boredom has been increasingly recognized as a relevant issue for occupational health and well-being. Although traditionally overlooked compared with stress or burnout, boredom represents a negative psychological state that can undermine employees’ psychological and physical health, such as depressive symptoms, and reduced work ability [1,2]. In this context, the Dutch Boredom Scale (DUBS) was developed [3] to provide a concise and valid instrument for measuring boredom in the workplace. Earlier boredom scales, such as the Boredom Proneness Scale (BPS, 4) and Job Boredom Scale (JBS, 5), were normally focused on general or trait boredom and lacked specificity for occupational contexts. Moreover, these instruments concentrated primarily on the antecedents of boredom in understimulating work environments, but did not capture the affective, cognitive and behavioural manifestations of boredom in itself. The DUBS was designed to address these limitations by measuring the subjective experience of boredom at work. Specifically, the authors [1] conceptualized boredom as a state of low arousal and dissatisfaction caused by a lack of stimulation and challenge at work, filling a clear gap in the literature by offering a domain-specific, psychometrically adequate and theoretically coherent measure.