Community role salience: the development and testing of a new measure

There is growing recognition that community plays a role in an individual's work-life experience. While measures of work and family role salience have been developed and applied in the worklife literature, no measure of community role salience had been developed. This has served to limit our understanding of community role salience and how it influences work-life experience. The research aimed to address this gap by developing a new measure for community role salience and community role importance, with a view to understanding the role community plays in shaping an individual's work-life experience. Surveys were administered to 59 participants from the construction sector. The new measure of role salience shows considerable promise as a reliable instrument. The structure and nature of work undertaken in the construction industry is different from that in many other industries, therefore the results may not be generalisable to other industries. However, it is considered that the instruments themselves can be applied in different contexts to explore the role community plays in shaping an individual's work-life experience.