Satisfaction With Job Facets

Abstract

The Satisfaction With Job Facets measure, developed by Andrews and Withey in 1976, is a concise psychometric tool designed to assess an individual’s overall job satisfaction. The instrument utilizes five items, each specifically targeting satisfaction levels across various defined job facets. A distinguishing feature of the scale is its unique response format, which employs a 7-point scale ranging from the highly positive descriptor, delighted, to the highly negative descriptor, terrible, offering a broad spectrum of affective response measurement.

Keywords

Job satisfaction, Job facets, Organizational behavior, Personnel psychology, Andrews and Withey, Job Descriptive Index, Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire, Affective states, Work attitudes.

Authors

Frank M. Andrews, Stephen B. Withey.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Satisfaction With Job Facets (SWJF) measure is to provide a brief yet robust assessment of an employee’s subjective well-being concerning their employment situation. By focusing on specific job facets—such as co-workers, the work itself, and supervision—the scale aims to capture a holistic view of overall job satisfaction that is quick and easy to administer in large-scale organizational surveys.

The scale serves as a valuable instrument for researchers and practitioners in organizational psychology who require a reliable, short-form measure for concurrent validation studies or for monitoring employee morale and work attitudes over time. Its design facilitates comparison with established, longer instruments like the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) and the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ).

Construct

The SWJF scale measures the psychological construct of job satisfaction, defined broadly as an employee’s affective and cognitive appraisal of their job and work environment. Unlike measures that focus solely on intrinsic or extrinsic rewards, the SWJF attempts to aggregate satisfaction across critical components, or facets, of the work experience.

The construct is operationalized through five items that collectively represent the core domains recognized as influencing employee contentment, including social relations (co-workers), task content (the work itself), physical and temporal conditions (surroundings/hours), and resource availability (equipment/supervision). The scale’s affective response format (delighted to terrible) emphasizes the emotional component of satisfaction.

Validity

Extensive research confirms the strong validity of the Andrews and Withey measure. Studies have established both its construct validity and concurrent validation against established measures of work attitudes. Specifically, the SWJF showed significant positive correlations with a range of beneficial organizational outcomes and employee perceptions.

Key positive correlations noted in the literature include measures of organizational commitment, self-rated performance, supervisory rated performance, favorable pay level, adequate promotion opportunities, positive interactions with management (boss), customer/client contact, autonomy (freedom to work the employee’s own way), opportunities for learning, level of decision making authority, and the mental effort required by the job. Conversely, the measure demonstrated expected negative correlations, notably with the employee’s intention to quit the organization (Mcfarlin & Rice, 1992; Steel & Rentsch, 1995, 1997).

Furthermore, Rentsch and Steel (1992) found that the SWJF correlated highly with overall satisfaction scores derived from both the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) and the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ). The SWJF also correlated positively with satisfaction across the specific JDI facets, including pay, supervision, promotions, co-workers, and the work itself, reinforcing its ability to capture multifaceted satisfaction.

Reliability

The internal consistency of the Satisfaction With Job Facets measure has been consistently demonstrated through various validation studies. Internal consistency reliability, measured using Coefficient alpha, indicates high homogeneity among the five scale items.

Reported Coefficient alpha values for the measure typically fall within a narrow and acceptable range, specifically from .79 to .81 (McFarlin & Rice, 1992; Rentsch & Steel, 1992; Steel & Rentsch, 1995, 1997). This range suggests that the items reliably measure the underlying construct of job satisfaction, making the scale suitable for research purposes requiring stable measurement properties.

Factor Analysis

While the original source material does not explicitly detail a formal factor analysis, the design of the Satisfaction With Job Facets scale strongly implies a single-factor structure intended to capture a global assessment of job satisfaction, despite aggregating responses across multiple facets. The high internal consistency (Coefficient alpha > .79) supports the use of a single, composite score derived from the five items.

Subsequent validation studies often treat the measure as unidimensional for practical purposes, focusing on its strong correlation with other established overall satisfaction indices (JDI Overall Satisfaction, MSQ Overall Satisfaction), suggesting that the general satisfaction factor dominates the variance captured by the five items.

Instrument

Test Type: Psychometric Self-Report Scale

Format: Five-item questionnaire utilizing a 7-point affective response scale.

Language Available: English (Original development language).

Population Group: Working adults / Employees.

Age Group: Typically 18+ (Adult workforce).

Population Details: Applicable across various industries and organizational levels, validated primarily using samples of employed individuals.

Test Methodology: Responses are obtained on a 7-point Likert-type scale where:

• 7 = delighted
• 6 = pleased
• 5 = mostly satisfied
• 4 = mixed (about equally satisfied and dissatisfied)
• 3 = mostly dissatisfied
• 2 = unhappy
• 1 = terrible

Keywords

Work attitudes, Employee morale, Organizational psychology, Psychological measurement, Likert scale, Affective measurement, Personnel assessment, Andrews and Withey, Job satisfaction.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source content.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source content.

Correspondence Address: Not provided in source content.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The scale was originally developed in 1976 by Andrews and Withey. Items were reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Inc., based on the Rentsch and Steel (1992) article, suggesting that specific usage, particularly reproduction for commercial or non-academic purposes, may require obtaining permission from the copyright holder (Sage Publications, Inc.) or the original authors.

Reference’s

• Andrews, F. M., & Withey, S. B. (1976). Social indicators of well-being: Americans’ perceptions of life quality. Plenum Press.
• McFarlin, D. B., & Rice, R. W. (1992). The role of pay in job satisfaction: A comparison of the pay satisfaction questionnaire and the Andrews and Withey global measure. Journal of Business and Psychology, 7(2), 177-187.
• Rentsch, J. R., & Steel, R. P. (1992). Construct and concurrent validation of the Andrews and Withey Job Satisfaction Questionnaire. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 52, 357-367. Copyright© 1992 by Sage Publications, Inc.
• Steel, R. P., & Rentsch, J. R. (1995). The relationship of job satisfaction to turnover and absenteeism: An examination of the Andrews and Withey global measure. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 16(3), 295-306.
• Steel, R. P., & Rentsch, J. R. (1997). The relationship of job satisfaction to turnover and absenteeism: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(6), 875-885.

Items of the Satisfaction With Job Facets

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

Responses are obtained on a 7-point Likert-type scale where 7 = delighted, 6 = pleased, 5 = mostly satisfied, 4 = mixed (about equally satisfied and dissatisfied), 3 = mostly dissatisfied, 2 = unhappy, and 1 = terrible.

1. How do you feel about your job?
2. How do you feel about the people you work with-your co-workers?
3. How do you feel about the work you do on your job-the work itself?
4. What is it like where your work-the physical surroundings, the hours, the amount of work you are asked to do?
5. How do you feel about what you have available for doing your job—I mean the equipment, information, good supervision, and so on?