Exploring the main drivers of academic frustration: a systematic scale development

Academics’ perceptions of their work environment not only affect their work motivation and psychological well-being (Zhang and Fu, 2019), but also their overall productivity and their growth in the scientific environment (Winter and Sarros, 2002). One of the possible reasons why academics can lack of motivation and psychological well-being is the level of frustration connected in carrying out their job. Past scientific literature has already developed multi-dimensional scales for capturing the essence of human frustration (Harrington, 2005). As urged by Sword et al. (2018), the existing theoretical framework on frustration has not been fully articulated by researchers since it addresses a set of different disciplines that necessitate a specific focus (e.g. the world of academics). And, in particular, no measure of academic frustration has been developed so far. Our study attempts to fill this literature gap and to provide a sound, reliable and empirically validated measure of academic frustration. Based on the current conceptualizations of frustration pertaining to a multi-sided literature (psychology, psychology of work, organizational science, management), we develop and validate a multi-dimensional measure of academic frustration following a multi-step process.