Psychometric Properties of the Emotional Labor Scale in a Turkish Sample of School Administrators

Year 2016, Volume: 16 Issue: 63, 0 - 0, 15.04.2016

Erkan Kıral

Abstract

Problem Statement: School administrators who are aware of their own
emotions and know how to manage them are in high demand nowadays.
It is important to improve the emotional labor of school administrators in
schools that have quite a high number of interactions. Literature review
shows that emotional labor has been studied in several service fields in the
service industry, but there is almost no research on school administrators.
It is hoped that the present study can be an important contribution to this
field.
Purpose of the study: The purpose of this study was to investigate the
psychometric properties of the Emotional Labor Scale (ELS) among
Turkish school administrators.
Methods: The study group of this descriptive survey model research
consisted of 212 volunteer school principals. The ELS was used to collect
data. First, exploratory factor analysis was conducted to test the construct
validity of the Emotional Labor Scale on the data from school principals,
and then confirmatory factor analysis was replicated to explore whether
the resulting structure was valid for the data from administrators.
Findings and Results: A three-factor structure fit the current data better
than the original two-factor structure. The internal consistency coefficients
for the overall and sub-scales of the ELS ranged from 0.71 to 0.90.
Relatively mild relationships were found between the sub-scales, and the
item discrimination was found acceptable for each item. School
administrators were found to display deep acting at the highest level,
followed respectively by genuine and surface acting. No significant
difference was found based on the demographic variables. 

Conclusions and Recommendations: Even though the Turkish version of the ELS revealed good reliability and validity in the samples, the psychometric properties of the screening tool should be confirmed in further studies. Using a qualitative research design, relatively low surface acting among school administrators might have been found. Using the ELS, comparative studies among school administrators and teachers addressing the relations to commitment, job satisfaction, exhaustion, and other factors can be conducted.
Keywords: Education, Principal, Emotional, Labor, Instrumentation