Development of a Work-Life Balance Scale: Perceived Effectiveness and Satisfaction across Roles

Abstract

The present study aims to summarize existing literature on work-life balance before providing a newly developed scale to measure this construct. Work-life balance has held many definitions since it was first proposed, but the most recent definition lacks a systematically developed self-report measure. Effectiveness and satisfaction have been put forth as components that account for perceived work-life balance (Greenhaus & Allen, 2011). However, there is not a scale that accounts for such facets. In the proposed study, items from the work-family literature were selected, as well as self-developed items, and consolidated into a complete scale that may be used to assess perceptions of work-life balance. Participants were used from Amazon’s MTurk to further explore the selected items that were then assessed via exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. This study aims to combine existing literature and extant items, as well as modified and self-developed items, into a scale that may better measure work-life balance and examine the fit of effectiveness and satisfaction facets as components of this construct.