Dr. Julian Decius (University of Bremen), together with Niclas Schaper and Andreas Seifert (Paderborn University) as well as Michael Knappstein (International University), has published two scales on informal learning in the workplace in GESIS’s “Collection of Social Science Items and Scales” (ZIS). Previously, the German-language item formulations were available only in the appendices of the English-language original publications. Guidance on evaluation and handling was accessible exclusively in English.
ZIS now provides fully German-language explanations on application, evaluation, and interpretation, supplemented by practice-relevant materials. This considerably facilitates immediate use in organizational practice—especially in HR, personnel development, and practice-oriented research, for example for needs-based surveys, monitoring, and the systematic derivation of development measures. At the same time, the central, openly accessible provision lowers barriers to implementation, creates clarity in procedures, and promotes consistent, traceable use.

For both scales, a transparency certificate from the German Diagnostics and Test Committee confirms complete, standard-compliant documentation and thus provides a reliable basis for informed decisions, quality assurance, and comparability.

The ZIS entries are available here, both the long scale and the short scale.