Job Satisfaction

Defining and Measuring Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction is traditionally defined as a pleasurable or positive emotional state that results from one's appraisal of one's job or job aspects. This definition includes both one's affective reactions to one's job (feelings) and one's cognitive evaluation of the job (thoughts). There is controversy about whether job satisfaction should be considered as the interplay of both one's thoughts and feelings, as implied in this definition, or whether the cognitive and affective aspects should be separated into distinct dimensions. Those advocating the latter approach cite studies showing that cognitively oriented measures of job satisfaction predict different behaviors to affect-based measures of job satisfaction.

Although the definition of job satisfaction is in some dispute, both sides agree on the need to align the measurement of job satisfaction with the definition. Defining job satisfaction as, say, an affective response but assessing it as an evaluation leads to confusion. A further issue to consider when measuring job satisfaction is its focus. One can assess how satisfied one is with one's job as a whole, or one's global feeling about the job. A typical question would be: “Overall, how much enjoyment do you find in your work?” An alternative to this global approach is to assess and sum up satisfaction with facets of the job, such as satisfaction with one's pay, one's colleagues, the nature of the work, and the supervision. Research shows that overall global satisfaction is something different from a combination of facet satisfactions. Moreover, satisfactions with different facets are often not highly related. For example, one can be very satisfied with colleagues but highly dissatisfied with promotion prospects. If one is trying to understand the overall effect of jobs, then global ratings are usually the best choice. However, a facet approach is more diagnostic if the assessor wants to know how to improve satisfaction in a particular situation.

Causes of Job Satisfaction

There are three well-recognized general causes of job satisfaction: the situation, the person, and the interaction between the situation and the person.