Attitude Toward Offshore Services (Free-Trade Resentment)

What it measures

A three-item scale measuring consumer resentment toward the practice of offshoring service jobs, framed around beliefs about government responsibility to protect domestic workers and corporate accountability for job displacement. Items reflect nationalist economic attitudes rather than personal interaction concerns, capturing the broader ideological dimension of opposition to service offshoring as a business practice.

Response format

Likert (format not specified)

Scale items

• It is the government's job to protect Americans from losing their jobs to overseas workers.
• Firms that send jobs overseas should be forced by law to find work for the laid-off American workers.
• Companies that send service jobs overseas are only worried about their own profits and not the welfare of Americans.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Two composite reliability estimates: CR = .92 (Sample 1) and CR = .89 (Sample 2) — Thelen, Yoo & Magnini (2011). VALIDITY: Comprehensive validation evidence reported. CONTEXT WARNING: US-specific scale — items explicitly reference 'Americans' and 'American workers.' Authors urge extreme caution in applying outside the US. For use in other national contexts, 'Americans' should be replaced with the relevant nationality, and the scale should be revalidated. This is the ideological/economic dimension of offshore sentiment, distinct from the interpersonal dimensions captured by the Communication Problem, Foreign Worker Enmity, and Data Security subscales.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Thelen, Shawn, John B. Yoo, and Vincent P. Magnini (2011). An assessment of the validity of consumer sentiments toward offshoring. Journal of Service Research, 14(4), 380–397.

Keywords