Overall Job Satisfaction Scale

Abstract

The Overall Job Satisfaction (OJS) scale was originally developed by Brayfield and Rothe in 1951. This foundational measure utilizes 18 items designed to capture a single, comprehensive dimension of an employee’s affective evaluation of their work environment. Due to its robustness, a widely adopted short version consisting of six items has also been extensively used in organizational psychology research to measure overall job satisfaction.

Keywords

Job satisfaction, Overall Job Satisfaction, Brayfield and Rothe, OJS scale, Psychometrics, Organizational Psychology, Employee well-being, Affective evaluation.

Authors

Brayfield, A. H., Rothe, H. F.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Overall Job Satisfaction scale is to provide a reliable and concise measure of an individual’s general affective attitude toward their job. It is designed to capture a global feeling of contentment or discontentment, rather than focusing on specific facets of the work environment (e.g., pay, supervision, or coworkers).

This scale serves as a fundamental tool in organizational research for assessing the relationship between employee attitudes and various organizational outcomes, including performance, turnover intentions, and organizational commitment. Both the original 18-item version and the streamlined six-item version fulfill this objective effectively.

Construct

The scale is designed to measure the psychological construct of Overall Job Satisfaction. This construct is conceptualized as a unidimensional, global measure reflecting the extent to which employees generally like their jobs. It is considered a core attitude in industrial-organizational psychology.

The items are structured to elicit a holistic feeling about the job, ensuring that the measurement reflects the individual’s overall affective state rather than an aggregation of satisfaction with individual components of the job. This focus on a single dimension allows researchers to succinctly assess the central variable of job satisfaction in large-scale studies.

Validity

Evidence supports both the convergent and discriminant validity of the OJS scale. Overall job satisfaction demonstrated positive correlations with several key organizational variables, including a composite measure of job facets, autonomy, distributive justice, supervisory support, task significance, sensitivity to equity, employee perceptions of performance, and job involvement.

Conversely, the OJS scale correlated negatively with indicators of organizational strain, such as family-work conflict, work routinization, role ambiguity, and role conflict. Furthermore, research by Judge et al. (1998) found a strong correlation (r = .68) between an employee’s self-reported job satisfaction and the perceptions reported by their significant other, providing external validation for the measure.

Reliability

The Overall Job Satisfaction scale consistently demonstrates high internal consistency across various studies and populations. For the original 18-item measure, the values for Coefficient alpha typically ranged from .88 to .91, indicating excellent reliability.

The shorter, more practical six-item version also maintains strong internal consistency, with reported Coefficient alpha values ranging from .83 to .90. These high reliability scores confirm that both versions of the scale effectively measure the intended single construct consistently.

Factor Analysis

The scale is designed as a one-dimensional measure of overall job satisfaction. Brooke, Russell, and Price (1988) utilized confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine the structure of the scale. Their findings empirically supported the distinctiveness of the OJS measure. Specifically, the analysis confirmed that the measure of job satisfaction was empirically separate from related, yet distinct, constructs such as organizational commitment and job involvement, reinforcing its utility as a unique measure of global job attitude.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report psychological scale measuring affective attitudes.

Format: Original 18 items or short 6 items, using a 5-point Likert-type scale.

Language Available: English (Original publication language).

Population Group: Working adults and employees across various industries.

Age Group: Adult population.

Population Details: Applicable to employees in diverse organizational settings where job attitudes are relevant research variables.

Test Methodology: Survey administration, typically paper-and-pencil or online, requiring respondents to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with statements regarding their job.

Keywords

Work routinization, Role conflict, Role ambiguity, Organizational commitment, Job facets, Autonomy, Employee satisfaction, Unidimensional scale.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A (Information not provided in source)

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A (Information not provided in source)

Correspondence Address: N/A (Information not provided in source)

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The original scale was first published in 1951 by Brayfield and Rothe. Information regarding current usage permissions and associated fees is not provided in the source material, but researchers often utilize the items for non-commercial academic purposes, citing the original publications.

Test Year: 1951 (Original 18-item measure).

Reference’s

The scale items and psychometric properties are derived from extensive research literature, including the original developers and subsequent validation studies:

• Agho, A. 0., Price, J. L., & Mueller, C. W. (1992). Discriminant validity of measures of job satisfaction, positive affectivity and negative affectivity. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 65, 185-196.
• Agho, A. O., Price, J. L., & Mueller, C. W. (1993). Discriminant validity of measures of job satisfaction, positive affectivity and negative affectivity. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 65, 185-196.
• Aryee, S., Fields, D., & Luk, V. (1999). Role stressors, work-family conflict, and job satisfaction: The moderating influence of spousal support and coping strategies. Journal of Management, 25(3), 335-358.
• Brayfield, A. H., & Rothe, H. F. (1951). An index of job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 35(5), 307-311.
• Brooke, P. P., Russell, D. W., & Price, J. L. (1988). Discriminant validation of measures of job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 73(2), 139-145.
• Cook, J. D., Hepworth, S. J., Wall, T. D., & Warr, P. B. (1981). The experience of work: A compendium of 249 measures and their use. London: Academic Press. (Items were taken from pp. 18-19).
• Judge, T. A., Locke, E. A., Durham, C. C., & Kluger, A. N. (1998). Dispositional effects on job and life satisfaction: The role of core evaluations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(1), 17-34.
• Moorman, R. H. (1991). Relationship between organizational justice and organizational citizenship behaviors: Do fairness perceptions influence employee citizenship? Journal of Applied Psychology, 76(6), 845-855.
• O’Neill, S., & Mone, M. (1998). Investigating the links between TQM and job satisfaction. Public Personnel Management, 27(4), 543-557.
• Pillai, R., Schriesheim, C. A., & Williams, M. L. (1999). Fairness perceptions and trust as mediators for transformational and transactional leadership: A two-sample study. Journal of Management, 25(6), 897-933.
• Shore, L. M., Newton, L. A., & Thornton, G. C. (1990). Job and organizational attitudes in relation to employee behavioral intentions. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 11(1), 57-67.

Items of the Overall Job Satisfaction scale

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Original measure (18 items):

Responses are obtained using a 5-point Likert-type scale where 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = undecided, 2 = disagree, and 1 = strongly disagree.

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) (Used in six-item version)
7. I feel fairly well satisfied with my present job (Used in six-item version)
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 (Used in six-item version)
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 (Used in six-item version)
14. Each day of work seems like it will never end (R)
15. I like my job better than the average worker does (Used in six-item version)
16. My job is pretty uninteresting (R)
17. I find real enjoyment in my work (Used in six-item version)
18. I am disappointed that I ever took this job (R)

Items denoted with (R) are reverse scored.

Six-item measure:

Responses are obtained using a 5-point Likert-type scale where 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = undecided, 2 = disagree, and 1 = strongly disagree.

Items:

1. I am often bored with my job (R)
2. I feel fairly well satisfied with my present job
3. I am satisfied with my job for the time being
4. Most days I am enthusiastic about my work
5. I like my job better than the average worker does
6. I find real enjoyment in my work Items denoted with (R) are reverse scored.