Scholars in the emerging field of emotion labor acknowledge the need for improved understanding and measurement of this construct's dimensionality. Defined as the management of personal emotions to produce desired customer responses, emotion labor's relevance for our increasingly service-oriented economy underscores the need to understand both the parameters or dimensional structure of this construct and its impact on various individually and organizationally relevant outcomes. The objective of this Research Planning Grant is the identification of emotion labor's defining dimensions and the subsequent development of an index to measure these dimensions. Toward this end, the research will 1) develop an item pool from literature review and qualitative methodologies to ascertain relevant dimensions of emotion labor; 2) administer an emotion labor item list to appropriate subjects, then use factor analytic techniques to extract significant dimensions; 3) construct and administer a revised emotion labor index; and 4) assess its validity and reliability as a measure of emotion labor. With the availability of an appropriately developed and tested emotion labor index, more systematic research on this subject may result and concerns regarding its effect on the US work force may be better addressed.
