The interest in diversity, equity, and inclusion in professional practice outpaces scholarly understanding. Some contemporary research explores individual perceptions and reactions to marginalized identities by examining five stigma characteristics—concealability, controllability, centrality, disruptiveness, and malleability. Yet, there is a gap in understanding the mechanisms of how these attributes are perceived and judged in the workplace. This gap is partly due to the lack of a reliable measure for stigma characteristics. Therefore, this paper aims to develop and validate a characteristics of stigma scale in two stages, involving four studies. In Stage I, we follow Hinkin's scale development process (1995, 1998) to create items based on the literature-defined stigma characteristics. We first invite subject matter experts to help us establish content validity. We then employ an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) with a sample of 278 employed individuals, confirming five distinct dimensions (Study 2). Further validation is conducted with responses from 351 employed individuals through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and tests for convergent and discriminant validity (Study 3). The Stage II involves further testing the scale's criterion and construct validity by examining its relationships with related constructs and assessing the nomological network with a sample of 322 individuals (Study 4). These steps collectively support the utility of the 15-item Stigma Characteristics Scale as a validated instrument.
