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

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.