How to Measure Job Satisfaction

10 Key excerpts on "How to Measure Job Satisfaction"

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  Gender and Sexuality in the Workplace

  • Christine Williams, Kirsten Dellinger, Lisa Keister(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Research on job quality is often based on measures of general job satisfaction, an ‘‘overall affective orientation on the part of individuals toward work roles which they are presently occupying’’ ( Kalleberg, 1977, p. 126 ). Job satisfaction can be explained not only by characteristics of individuals (e.g., years of education) but also by characteristics of jobs and work settings. The latter influences on job satisfaction have roots in research by Turner and Lawrence (1965) and Hackman and Lawler (1971) who provide evidence that employees who work on jobs high on ‘‘core dimensions’’ (i.e., variety, task identity, autonomy, and feedback) show high work satisfaction ( Hackman & Oldham, 1976 ; Kalleberg, 1977 ; Loher, Noe, Moeller, & Fitzgerald, 1985 ). More recently, research focuses on the nature of work relationships ( Wharton, Rotolo, & Bird, 2000 ). Ducharme and Martin (2000) , using data from the 1997 National Employee Survey, find that job satisfaction is related to both instrumental and affective social support from coworkers. Ganster, Fulicier, and Mayes (1986) , using data DINA BANERJEE AND CAROLYN C. PERRUCCI 40 from a contracting firm, find job satisfaction related to affective social support from the immediate supervisor as well as from ‘‘other people at work.’’ Handel (2005) finds that workers’ job satisfaction is associated most strongly with interesting work, followed by positive management– employee relations and promotion opportunities, and then by subjective pay evaluation, job security, independent work, and positive coworker relations. The present study examines the consequences of an expanded set of individual human capital and work context characteristics on a recent national sample of employees’ evaluations of their general job satisfaction. It first compares men and women employees, and white and nonwhite employees on their reported levels of job satisfaction.

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  The Psychology of Behaviour at Work

  The Individual in the Organization

  • Adrian Furnham(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  One might expect the notion of job satisfaction to be in the forefront of employers’ minds. Interestingly enough, however, the extent to which organizations have adopted the term and institutionalized intervention based on job satisfaction related theory and research is considerably more mixed. Job satisfaction, for example, is rarely included as part of an organization’s key values, basic beliefs, core competencies or guiding principles, nor is the topic given much direct exposure in popular business books. Rather, the idea of having satisfied employees is more likely to be considered some form of outcome or end-state, which occurs as a result of adherence to some more proactively typically action oriented set of factors, behaviours or set of interventions.

  Box 6.4  Overall job satisfaction questionnaire

  Items

    1.  My job is like a hobby to me   2.  My job is usually interesting enough to keep me from getting bored   3.  It seems that my friends are more interested in their jobs (R)   4.  I consider my job rather unpleasant (R)   5.  I enjoy my work more than my leisure time   6.  I am often bored with my job (R)   7.  I feel fairly well satisfied with my present job   8.  Most of the time I have to force myself to go to work (R)   9.  I am satisfied with my job for the time being 10.  I feel that my job is no more interesting than others I could get (R) 11.  I definitely dislike my work (R) 12.  I feel that I am happier in my work than most other people 13.  Most days I am enthusiastic about my work 14.  Each day of work seems like it will never end (R) 15.  I like my job better than the average worker does 16.  My job is pretty uninteresting (R) 17.  I find real enjoyment in my work 18.  I am disappointed I ever took this job (R)

  Responses: Strongly agree: Agree; Undecided; Disagree; Strongly disagree; scored 5 to 1 respectively. (R) reverse items.

  Source: Brayfield & Rothe (1951).

  Generally speaking, attention to job satisfaction related issues seems to range anywhere from complete repression of the term to fully integrated measurement and evaluation tools, such as annual organization culture surveys, multi-rater feedback methodologies or the Balanced Scorecard approach. Even in those organizations where job satisfaction issues are addressed directly through formal institutional systems and policies, the conceptualization tends to be more outcome-oriented, such as morale, commitment or even turnover. Thus, while these areas are entirely different psychological constructs in the literature, managers and practitioners often use the terms interchangeably when working with and responding to these types of issues. This blurring of the construct itself and intermittent level of implementation raises some important issues for researchers and theorists working in the area of job satisfaction, as well as for the practitioners who must work within and manage such complex boundaries. (Judge & Church, 2000: 176–177)

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  Equivalence in Measurement

  • Chester A. Schriesheim, Linda L. Neider(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  A review of a 132 V. SCARPELLO AND J.C. HAYTON database of psychological and sociological literature (PsycLit) since 1976 found a further 4,512 articles and dissertations referring to job satisfaction, giving a current estimate of approximately 8,000 published works referenc-ing the subject. Job satisfaction has been studied as a dependent, indepen-dent, and moderator variable. It has been shown to be significantly related to life and family satisfaction (e.g., Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1994; Bray-field, Wells, & Strate, 1957; Judge, Boudreau, & Bretz, 1994), job stress (e.g., Ironson, 1992), turnover (e.g., Mobley, 1977; Porter, Steers, Mowday, & Boulian, 1974; Schneider & Snyder, 1975), attendance (e.g., Scott & Tay-lor, 1985), propensity to vote for a union (e.g., Hamner & Smith, 1978; Schriesheim, 1978), organizational citizenship behaviors (e.g., Bateman & Organ, 1983; Moorman, 1993; Smith, Organ, & Near, 1983), and organiza-tional commitment (e.g., O’Reilly & Caldwell, 1981). Roznowski and Hulin (1992) suggest that job satisfaction occupies a place in organizational behavior research similar to that of general intelligence, or “g,” in general psychological research. While g influences what people are able to do, job satisfaction influences what people choose to do. Therefore, the usefulness of measures of g prior to organizational entry is paralleled by the useful-ness of valid measures of job satisfaction after organizational entry (Roznowski & Hulin, 1992). There are a number of definitions of the job satisfaction construct which, taken together, generally suggest that it is a pleasurable affective response to a match between the preferences for job rewards (called needs) (Weiss, Dawis, England, & Lofquist, 1967), values (Locke, 1976), and goals (Smith, Kendall, & Hulin, 1969) of an individual and the job reinforcers present in the work environment (Dawis, & Lofquist, 1984; Scarpello, 1980).

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  The Emerald Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology

  • Robert L. Dipboye(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Although work-related attitudes consist of cognitive, behavioral, and evaluative components, the measurement of job satisfaction has focused more on the evaluative component than the cognitive and behavioral components. Psychologists often say that whatever exists is measurable. As nebulous as attitudes seem, they too are measurable using quantitative scales. Interviews and standardized self-report questionnaires are the two primary methods investigators have used in measuring job satisfaction and other work-related attitudes.

  Interviews

  One approach is to interview the person and assess their satisfaction based on their answers to questions. Take, for example, Grace Clements’ description of her job, the making the molded inner lining of suitcases in a plant manufacturing luggage:

  “All day long is the same thing over and over. That’s about ten steps every forty seconds about 800 times a day… I daydream while I’m working. Your mind gets so it automatically picks out the flaws [in the luggage] … You get to be automatic in what you’re doing and your mind is doing something else … I hope I don’t work many more years. I’m tired. I’d like to stay home and keep house.” (Terkel, 1974, p.290)

  Contrast of Grace’s description of her job to that of Kay Stepkin, the director of a small nonprofit bakery producing and selling bread:

  “We try to have a compromise between doing things efficiently and doing things in a human way. Our bread has to taste the same way every day, but you don’t have to be machines. On a good day it’s beautiful to be here.”

  “We have a good time and work hard and we’re laughing … I think a person can work as hard as he’s capable, not only for others but also for his own satisfaction … I am doing exactly what I want to do … Work is an essential part of being alive. Your work is your identity. It tells you who you are … There’s such a joy in doing work well.” (Terkel, 1974, p. 470)

  Grace’s feelings about her job are quite different from Kay’s: Grace views each workday as a wearisome burden, whereas Kay anticipates each workday with eagerness and challenge. A reasonable inference from their comments is that Kay is much more satisfied with her job than Grace. These quotes are taken from Working: People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do, by Studs Terkel (1974). You may wish to check out the YouTube video of a theatrical production of Working in which a meter reader tells how he finds job satisfaction.3 Also check out the YouTube interview with Studs Terkel in which he describes how a meter reader finds job satisfaction.4

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  Career Development and Job Satisfaction

  • Josiane Fahed-Sreih(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • IntechOpen

    (Publisher)

  The needs of employees toward the work itself can be further realized through job characteristic theory. In other words, this theory helps to answer the question of how to design a task to make employees feel satisfied. Job characteristic theory suggested that job dimensions such as task identify, task significance, skill variety, autonomy, and feedback impact employees’ satisfaction with the work itself [3, 74]. Among these dimensions, skill variety, task identities, and task significance together produce a sense of meaningfulness of work, which reflects the extent the work tasks fit in the employees’ value and beliefs. The dimension of autonomy allows employees to experience the responsibility for outcomes of the work. 35 Job Training Satisfaction, Job Satisfaction, and Job Performance DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89117 Responsibility for outcomes refers to the extent the employees feel that they are responsible for the quality of the work. Providing either positive or negative feed-back to employees make them have the opportunities to know the actual results of the work activities. Knowledge of results means that employees know how well or poorly they are doing. Thus, research suggests that the higher the three psychologi-cal states, the higher the working motivation, which leads to higher job satisfaction. An employee who has a high level of job satisfaction holds positive feelings toward his or her job, while he/she may hold negative feelings if he/she has a low level of job satisfaction [3]. 3.3 How important is job satisfaction? The next question to be answered is “does job satisfaction really matter?” This question can be answered through elaborating the relationship between job satisfac-tion and job performance, job commitment, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), absenteeism, and turnover. First, a number of researchers have been curious about the relationships between job satisfaction and job performance.

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  Measures of Job Satisfaction, Organisational Commitment, Mental Health and Job related Well-being

  A Benchmarking Manual

  • Chris Stride, Toby D. Wall, Nick Catley(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Interscience

    (Publisher)

  A mean score of 4.15 for Job-related Anxiety–Content-ment for one group of employees, for example, is of limited value by itself; but when set against a score of, say, 3.41 for another group engaged on similar work, it becomes much more interpretable. Such comparisons can be used by the practitioner or researcher for diagnostic or benchmarking pur-poses. Many organisations now routinely carry out employee opinion surveys incorporating such measures to inform their development plans, but in the absence of systematic comparative data they do not gain the degree of benefit from those exercises that they otherwise might. The importance of such comparative data is firmly established in measure-ment theory, and is well-catered for in many areas of research and practice. Intelligence test scores, for instance, are firmly anchored in normative data, as are those for leading personality scales. Equivalent progress is needed for measures of job satisfaction, organisational commitment, mental health and 2 MEASURES BENCHMARKING MANUAL well-being, if the full potential of the scales that have been constructed is to be realised. This manual represents one small step towards meeting that need. MEASURES COVERED The four measures, including their subscales and/or alternative versions, are: 1. Job Satisfaction: A 15-item scale (Warr, Cook & Wall, 1979) yielding both an overall scale score and two subscale scores, thus providing three measures: Overall Job Satisfaction (15 items) Intrinsic Job Satisfaction (7 items) Extrinsic Job Satisfaction (8 items) 2. Organisational Commitment: A 9-item overall scale (Cook & Wall, 1980), which has also been used in a shorter 6-item form. The original 9-item scale had three 3-item subscales, namely Organisational Identification, Organisational Loyalty and Organisational Involvement.

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  Job Quality and Employer Behaviour

  • S. Bazen, C. Lucifora, W. Salverda, S. Bazen, C. Lucifora, W. Salverda(Authors)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Individual perceptions of the industrial relations environment are positively associated with satis- faction, indicating that a good environment in the workplace is very important for individual welfare. Finally, employer behaviour is significantly associated with some of the dimensions of job dissatisfaction, but only three behavioural factors are clear determinants of all four dimensions of job (dis)satisfaction: the presence of guaranteed job security, the presence of internal labour markets, and the presence of formal procedures for dealing with collective disputes. With regard to the second of the above dimensions, the results for the preference accorded to insiders in career development (through the internal labour market) clearly confirm that this significantly increases satisfaction. Conversely the other two employer practices are negatively associated with job satisfaction, and the association is not the result of reverse causation. While these results may at first seem counterintuitive, there are a number of possible explanations for them. For example there may be a trade-off between collective interests and individual welfare, these practices may benefit some workers at the expense of others, or employers may expect employee compliance in return. All three of these can result, ceteris paribus, in lower job satisfaction. Finally, the above findings suggest that particular care should be taken when interpreting empirical evidence if the different facets of job satisfaction are analyzed independently or when only an indicator for overall job satisfaction is considered. 82 Job Satisfaction and Employer Behaviour Notes 1. These dimensions are selectivity in recruiting, employment security, incentive pay, employee ownership, information sharing, participation and empowerment, self- managed teams, training and skill development, cross-utilization and cross-training, symbolic egalitarianism and promotion from within.

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  Organization Theory and Technocratic Consciousness

  • Mats Alvesson(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  5. Job Satisfaction, Motivation and Meaning of Work The well-being and job satisfaction of personnel are not in themselves of major interest from the management perspective. Job satisfaction, how-ever, is regarded as being closely related to motivation. Since the problem of motivation is of the greatest interest to executives these must, at least indirectly, take account of the well-being of their personnel. In order to understand why working life assumes the form it does and why employees feel as they do, the attitude of companies (management) to job satisfaction and motivation poses an interesting problem. The management-orientated organization theoretical literature often as-cribes greater interest to motivation than to job satisfaction. In this chapter I shall also focus on the motivation problem, job satisfaction being treated more implicitly. I wish to emphasize that in this chapter I examine the aspects of motivation above all as they are relevant from the point of view of management perspective. Most of the literature I have studied is based on this perspec-tive. Amongst other things this fact has certain implications for the concepts which are applied. Normally I prefer to use words such as engagement or intentionality rather than motivation when describing the interest of indi-viduals in taking action. In management-orientated motivation theory these expressions are not frequently used. If it is a question of motivation (engagement, intentionality) in connection with an acting/behaving con-cerning tasks which are narrowly defined and controlled by a management function, motivation is perhaps a more accurate expression than engage-ment, for example. The former concept is associated with instrumental reason, while engagement refers to the negation of this reason (see Ch. 1).

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  Construction Workers, U.S.A.

  • Herbert Applebaum(Author)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  7 JOB SATISFACTION AMONG CONSTRUCTION WORKERS INTRODUCTION Contemporary models of job satisfaction generally take into account two sources of variations: (1) the needs and values and individual characteristics of workers, and (2) the nature and organizational structure of jobs, firms, organizations, and industries. When the characteristics of individuals interact in a positive way with the characteristics of jobs, there is a high degree of job satisfaction. Workers needs and job requirements also vary with age, race, sex, and levels of education. While individual characteristics are related to job satisfaction and should not be ne- glected, the literature on work satisfaction suggests that it is the structural or job-related characteristics that are the most critical in producing satisfied workers (Hanson, Martin, and Tuch, 1987, p. 288). Some of the aspects of job characteris- tics that have been studied in connection with work satisfaction include organiza- tional attributes, job control by management, worker autonomy, skill levels, specialization, socialization on the job, promotional opportunities, hours of work, wage levels, worker decision making, and others. A distinction is sometimes made between extrinsic and intrinsic factors—external and internal job characteristics. Internal or intrinsic factors include work benefits such as autonomy, control over the work process, interesting and challenging work, chances for socializing at the workplace—factors that have to do with the nature of the work itself and the work environment. Extrinsic or external factors include rewards such as high wages, good fringe benefits, job security, and medical insurance. While the literature on work satisfaction often places most stress on job charac- teristics, we need to question whether this is the whole story or just the major ele- ment in job satisfaction. Workers' needs and characteristics should also be considered.

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  Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior

  Evidence-based Lessons for Creating Sustainable Organizations

  • Steve M. Jex, Thomas W. Britt, Cynthia A. Thompson, Cynthia A Thompson(Authors)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Applied H. R. M. Research, 9, 39–40. Smith, P. C. (1975). The job descriptive index, revised. Bowling Green State University Smith, P. C., Kendall, L. M., & Hulin, C. L. (1969). Measurement of satisfaction in work and retirement. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally. Somers, M. (2010). Patterns of attachment to organizations: Commitment profiles and work outcomes. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 83(2), 443–453. Spector, P. E. (1975). Relationships of organizational frustration with reported behavioral reactions of employees. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60(5), 635–637. doi:10.1037/h0077157 Spector, P. E. (1985). Measurement of human service staff satisfaction: Development of the Job Satisfaction Survey. American Journal of Community Psychology, 13(6), 693–713. doi:10.1007/BF00929796 Spector, P. E. (1997). Job satisfaction: Application, assessment, causes, and consequences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS& CSC=Y&NEWS=N&PAGE=fulltext&D=psy c3&AN=1997-08522-000 Spector, P. E., & Jex, S. M. (1998). Development of four self-report measures of job stressors and strain: Interpersonal con- flict at work scale, organizational constraints scale, quantitative workload inventory, and physical symptoms inventory. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 3, 356–367. Spector, P. E., Dwyer, D. J., & Jex, S. M. (1988). Relation of job stressors to affective, health, and performance outcomes: A com- parison of multiple data sources. Journal of References 445 Applied Psychology, 73(1), 11–19. doi:10. 1037/0021-9010.73.1.11 Staw, B. M., & Ross, J. (1985). Stability in the midst of change: A dispositional approach to job attitudes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 70, 469–480. Staw, B. M., Bell, N. E., & Clausen, J. A. (1986). The dispositional approach to job attitudes: A lifetime longitudinal test. Administrative Science Quarterly, 31, 56–77.

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