Measurement of role stress: Dimensionality of scale items

In the short scales developed by Rizzo et al. (1970) role conflict and role ambiguity are confounded with negative and positive item wording. In an attempt to unconfound the scales, responses from 220 subjects were obtained to the original set of 30 items. Sets of positive- and negative- worded items were factored separately. It was found that subjects responded somewhat to the conflict and ambiguity dimensions, but also to subscales within each dimension, to the attribution of the source of stress, and to key words in the items.