DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENERAL EMOTIONAL LABOR SCALE – URDU (GELS – U)

Abstract

The purpose of the current research is to develop a scale that measures Emotional Labor in Urdu and the study describes the procedure followed to develop the General Emotional Labor Scale – Urdu (GELS – U). The process of scale development was broken up into different phases. The first phase of scale construction dealt with item generation and the second involved conducting a pilot study. The sample for the pilot study consisted of 308 individuals. Based on the results of the pilot study the items of the scale were reduced from 49 to 30 using factor analysis and item-total correlations. The last phase of the study entailed norms development and establishing the reliability of GELS – U. For this purpose, the sample consisted of 505 individuals. The internal consistency of GELS – U was found to be 0.810, and the test-retest reliability was 0.871. Thus, the General Emotional Labor Scale – Urdu was developed as a measure of emotional labor in the national language of Pakistan – i.e. Urdu. Such a scale can be useful for not just researchers but for organizations in the service sector as well. This will help understanding in the performance of emotional labor, its effects on employees and the possibility of training employees who might need to perform such labor.