This study aims to address the lack of standardised and comparable primary data collection procedures in Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) by developing shortened versions of 14 previously established scales for assessing worker-related subcategories. The objective is to reduce data collection time and resource requirements while maintaining the original scales’ reliability and goodness-of-fit. The method comprised an iterative approach of applying network and exploratory factor analyses to screen for the most representative items, of each social phenomenon, with better loading factors. The reduced version of the instruments were applied to five samples containing 289 to 549 workers from over 50 industries and various job positions for conducting the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The study resulted in a set of 14 instruments comprising 39 indicators, grounded in ILO conventions and recommendations as well as established literature across various social science fields. These instruments are applicable across different working contexts, economic sectors, and countries. CFA demonstrated adequate to predominantly excellent model fit and reliability indices for all instruments and their respective indicators. In addition to the instruments themselves, application guidelines and further methodological recommendations were developed to support S-LCA practitioners. While primarily designed for social sustainability assessment within S-LCA, the instruments also show potential applicability beyond this scope, including use by policymakers, human resource professionals, and non-governmental organisations. This study had the limitation of being applied only in the Brazilian scope, which points to the potential of further investigations to verify whether the same ranges for goodness-of-fit and reliability indices are found in cross-cultural studies.
Chabrawi et al. (Sun,) studied this question.