Job Satisfaction Survey

Abstract

The Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) is a widely utilized instrument developed by Paul E. Spector in 1985. It is designed specifically to measure nine facets of employee satisfaction within organizational settings, initially focusing on human service staff but applicable across various industries. The JSS consists of 36 items, with four items dedicated to each of the nine subscales. This robust psychological instrument uses a 6-point Likert Scale format, allowing researchers and practitioners to capture nuanced attitudes toward various aspects of the work environment, including compensation, management, and intrinsic job characteristics.

Keywords

Job Satisfaction, Organizational Psychology, Personnel Assessment, Employee Attitudes, Psychometrics, Compensation, Work Environment, Paul Spector.

Authors

Paul E. Spector

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) is to provide a comprehensive, multidimensional measure of employee attitudes toward their jobs. Developed to address the need for a practical and psychometrically sound instrument, the JSS allows organizations to diagnose specific areas of dissatisfaction, which is crucial for improving employee retention, productivity, and overall organizational climate. Its initial application centered on the measurement of human service staff satisfaction, but its utility has since expanded across occupational boundaries.

The scale facilitates detailed assessment by breaking down the complex concept of job satisfaction into nine distinct facets. This allows for targeted intervention strategies, enabling management to focus resources on specific problem areas, such as inadequate supervision, poor communication, or perceived unfairness in pay or promotion systems. The comprehensive nature of the JSS makes it a valuable tool for organizational development and human resource management.

Construct

The JSS measures the psychological construct of job satisfaction, defined as an affective response to one’s job environment. This construct is operationalized through nine specific, interrelated facets of the work experience. These facets cover both intrinsic aspects (e.g., the work itself) and extrinsic aspects (e.g., pay, benefits, supervision) of the job, providing a holistic view of the employee experience.

The nine constructs measured are: Pay, Promotion, Supervision, Benefits, Rewards (Contingent), Operating Procedures, Coworkers, Work Itself, and Communication. Each subscale contributes to the overall score, allowing for the generation of a global satisfaction index while retaining the diagnostic capability of the individual dimensions. The scale items are carefully balanced, including both positively and negatively worded statements (reversed items indicated by ‘r’), which helps to control for response biases typically associated with self-report measures.

Validity

While the initial source content focuses primarily on reliability coefficients, the Job Satisfaction Survey has been subject to extensive validation studies since its publication in 1985. The original development sought to establish content validity by ensuring the items adequately represent the domain of job satisfaction facets relevant to employees. Spector’s work established the measure as appropriate for use in human service settings, demonstrating initial evidence of construct validity.

Subsequent psychometric evaluations have confirmed the structural validity of the nine-factor model across diverse samples and cultures. For instance, studies conducted in the Iranian population have confirmed the cross-cultural relevance and structural integrity of the JSS, suggesting robustness in terms of generalizability. The strong discriminatory power of the subscales, allowing researchers to distinguish between satisfaction levels across different job aspects, further supports its construct validity.

Reliability

The JSS exhibits strong internal consistency, both for the overall scale and for most of its individual subscales, as typically measured by Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients. The overall scale demonstrates excellent Reliability, indicating that the 36 items consistently measure the general construct of job satisfaction.

The reported Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients for the nine subscales and the total score are generally strong, suggesting high internal consistency within each facet:

• Total Scale: 0.91 (Excellent)
• Supervision: 0.82
• Work itself (Nature of work): 0.78
• Coworkers: 0.77
• Rewards: 0.76
• Pay: 0.75
• Promotion: 0.73
• Benefits: 0.73
• Communication: 0.71
• Operating procedures: 0.62

The majority of subscales meet or exceed the acceptable threshold of 0.70 for internal consistency in social science research. The Operating Procedures subscale, while slightly lower at 0.62, is still often considered acceptable for newly developed or short scales, though it warrants careful interpretation in research.

Factor Analysis

The Job Satisfaction Survey is structured around a multi-dimensional, nine-factor model. This design presupposes that the nine distinct facets of satisfaction are separable constructs that collectively contribute to overall job satisfaction. The original development utilized statistical methods, likely including Factor Analysis, to ensure that the four items designated for each subscale loaded strongly onto their intended factor and minimally onto others.

The resulting factor structure allows the JSS to function effectively as a diagnostic tool. By confirming the distinctness of the factors—such as separating satisfaction with Pay from satisfaction with Supervision or Coworkers—researchers can pinpoint precise organizational issues. Subsequent validation studies often replicate this nine-factor structure, affirming the scale’s theoretical foundation and its ability to measure distinct components of the work environment.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report psychological scale (Organizational/Industrial Psychology)

Format: 36 items distributed across nine subscales, using a 6-point Likert Scale format.

Language Available: English (original), with published validation studies in other languages, including Persian (Farsi).

Population Group: Employees and staff in various organizations, originally focused on human service staff but widely applied across sectors.

Age Group: Adults (Working population)

Population Details: Applicable across diverse organizational roles and hierarchies where the concepts of pay, promotion, supervision, benefits, and communication are relevant. It is particularly useful in environments where assessing complex organizational dynamics is necessary.

Test Methodology: Respondents indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with each statement using the following 6-point scale:

1. Disagree very much
2. Disagree moderately
3. Disagree slightly
4. Agree slightly
5. Agree moderately
6. Agree very much

Items marked with ‘(r)’ are reverse-scored prior to calculating subscale and total scores.

Keywords

Employee morale, organizational culture, work attitudes, personnel management, satisfaction dimensions, JSS, organizational assessment, work environment measurement.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source content.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source content.

Correspondence Address: Paul E. Spector, University of South Florida (Affiliation based on public information).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Job Satisfaction Survey was developed by Paul E. Spector and first published in 1985. Specific conditions for use, including permissions and potential fees, are managed by the author. The author’s official website provides guidance on usage, often permitting non-commercial academic research use without charge, while commercial applications typically require explicit permission or a license.

Conditions for use are detailed here: http://paulspector.com/scales/our-assessments/conditions-for-using-these-assessments/

The original PDF for the instrument can be downloaded here: http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~pspector/scales/ajcp85-jss.pdf

Reference’s

• Spector‚ P. E. (1985). Measurement of human service staff satisfaction: Development of the Job Satisfaction Survey. American Journal of Community Psychology‚ 13‚ 693-713.
• Spector‚ P. E. (1997). Job satisfaction: Application‚ assessment‚ causes‚ and consequences. Thousand Oaks‚ CA.: Sage Publications.
• Zareh‚ M‚. (1384). Validity and reliability of job satisfaction survey scale. the second conference of human resource development. gostaresh va noosazi sanayeh Iran. (Persian)
• Akbaritabar‚ A.‚ Mokarami‚ H.‚ Nazifi‚ M.‚ Rahiminejad‚ M.‚ mirkamandar‚ E.‚ Hosseinpouri‚ M. (2013). Psychometric properties of Spector’s job satisfaction survey in the Iranian population. Koomesh‚ 14(3)‚ 335-345.

Items of the Job Satisfaction Survey

Pay

1. I feel I am being paid a fair amount for the work I do.
2. Raises are too far and few between. (r)
3. I am unappreciated by the organization when I think about what they pay me. (r)
4. I feel satisfied with my chance for salary increases.

Promotion

1. There is really too little chance for promotion on my job. (r)
2. Those that do well on the job stand a fair chance of being promoted.
3. People get ahead as fast here as they do in other places.
4. I am satisfied with my chances for promotion.

Supervision

1. My supervisor is quite competent in doing his/her job.
2. My supervisor is unfair to me. (r)
3. My supervisor shows too little interest in the feelings of subordinates. (r)
4. I like my supervisor.

Benefits

1. I am not satisfied with the benefits I receive. (r)
2. The benefits we receive are as good as most other organizations offer.
3. The benefit package we have is equitable. (r)
4. There are benefits we do not have which we should have (r)

Rewards

1. When I do a good job‚ I receive the recognition for it that I should receive.
2. I do not feel that the work I do is appreciated. (r)
3. There are few rewards for this who work here. (r)
4. I don’t feel my efforts are rewarded the way they should be. (r)

Operating procedures

1. Many of our rules and procedures make doing a good job difficult. (r)
2. My efforts to do a good job are seldom blocked by red tape.
3. I have too much to do at work. (r)
4. I have too much paperwork. (r)

Coworkers

1. I like the people I work with.
2. I find I have to work harder to my job than I should because of the incompetence of people I work with. (r)
3. I enjoy my coworkers.
4. There is too much bickering and fighting at work. (r)

Work itself

1. I sometimes feel my job is meaningless. (r)
2. I like doing the things I do at work.
3. I feel a sense of pride in doing my job.
4. My job is enjoyable.

Communication

1. Communications seem good within this organization.
2. The goals of this organization are not clear to me. (r)
3. I often feel that I do not know what is going on with the organization. (r)
4. Work assignments are often not fully explained. (r)