Putting the stress back into role stress: improving the measurement of role conflict and role ambiguity

Traditional measures of role conflict and role ambiguity assess the frequency with which a person experiences issues with role expectations. The cognitive model of stress developed by Lazarus and Folkman in 1984 emphasizes that a potentially stressful episode does not actually create distress unless it is appraised as threatening. This study takes the first step towards integrating these two approaches, by adding threat appraisals to the traditional measures of conflict and ambiguity. Surveys were distributed to all employees of an electronics/software firm, measuring role stress, physical and psychological strain, several work related attitudes, and withdrawal behaviors. The new measure of role conflict was more predictive of the strain outcomes than was the traditional measure of role conflict, and in general shows promise as a better way of measuring role stress.