A measure assessing prescriptive age stereotypes towards younger workers, the Workplace Ambivalent Youngism Scale (WAYS), was developed and validated with 1,888 participants from U.S. and Portugal across four studies. Study 1 generated younger worker prescriptive stereotypes items. Study 2 explored the item pool factor structure. Study 3 validated the factor structure, examined convergent and divergent validity and tested for measurement invariance. The final scale has 25 items and eight first-order factors, subsumed under three second-order factors: humility- deference, loyalty-belonging, and vitality-innovation, which show ambivalent expectations regarding younger workers. Study 4 tested the predictive power of WAYS with time-lagged data.

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