Andres Martin-de-Nicolas Wilson, N. L., & Holmvall, C. M. (2013).

The Development and Validation of the Incivility From Customers Scale. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 18(3), 310-326. doi: 10.1037/a0032753 Recent studies point to an understudied source of workplace incivility, customers and other external entities. Research points to these organizational outsiders as a more common source for incivility experienced in the workplace. The authors conducted two experimental studies with the purpose of developing and validating a method for measuring these external sources of incivility in the workplace. The hypotheses tested are straightforward. It is predicted that customer incivility will be positively associated with turnover intention, and general/jobspecific psychological strain, while negatively related to job satisfaction. The first study served as the prototypal experiment using a small sampling of 30 local undergraduate students. With this preliminary study was limited in size, it served to provide feedback to the authors in preparation for the larger second study. Participants for the second study were recruited via a wide variety of avenues in order to obtain as diverse a sample as possible. Of the 439 participants, there were 335 women, 99 men, and 5 unidentified. They all were at least 18 years of age and working in retail sales as an associate/cashier or in the foodservice industry as a server or bartender. The individuals all had at minimum six months of experience on the job, and worked no less than 10 hours per week. A majority of the participants (365) were enrolled as full-time post-secondary students. Respondents answered questions on an online survey, with random redirection to two versions of questionnaires. To quantify incivility frequency, a 24item survey developed in the first study measured the how often a respondent experienced incivility from their customers. Participants also provided responses to a workplace incivility scale used in developed in previous studies. The items on this scale were modified to frame the source of incivility from customers rather than organizational sources. This provided a benchmark by which to validate the results of the 24-item scale. Similarly, other characteristics were measured using modified versions of scales developed in previous studies on workplace incivility, including perceived psychological aggression, justice, job satisfaction, turnover intention and general/job-specific psychological strain. After several tests to ensure, the validity of the scale items, the results support all of the original hypotheses. The strongest relationship observed was job satisfaction in relation to the degree of customer incivility, with a correlation of r=-0.37. Turnover intention, general psychological strain, and job-specific strain had correlation strengths of r=0.27, r=0.21, and r=0.32 respectively. While all the hypotheses are supported by the results, the authors freely admit that their sample diversity was limited because of the large number of fulltime students represented. There is no speculation as to what possible steps organizations can take to reduce customer incivility, but this body of work provides a basis by which further investigation into customer incivility can benefit.