Technical Reports - Office of Scale Research

The Reliability & Validity of Role Ambiguity & Role Conflict Measures Pertaining to Salespeople

Marketing researchers have shown significant interest in the constructs of role ambiguity and role conflict as they relate to salesforce outcomes. Recently, several authors have addressed the psychometric qualities of the extant measures of these constructs (e.g., Fisher and Gitelson 1983). Their findings have indicated a lack of consistency in both predictive and nomological validity. Unfortunately, these reviews have been based on research including a considerable number of non-sales activities. This study reviews the measures being used in marketing and focuses only on research pertaining to salespeople. No substantive conflicting findings were found. Eight measures purporting to measure role ambiguity (or role clarity) were identified, and five purporting to measure role conflict. The reliabilities of these measures were found to be moderate to good. The Rizzo, House, and Lirtzman (1970) role ambiguity and conflict measures were found to have reasonable evidence supporting claims of validity. The other identified measures had notably less supporting evidence for claims of validity, although some have been in existence for a relatively short period and may garner significant support in subsequent use.

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Comments: Dr. Gordon C. Bruner II