As new interns in the human resource department at SAVECO, Juan and Barbara were excited to receive their first major assignment. The president of the company had just asked them to assess the job satisfaction of the company’s 210-person workforce. After returning to a shared office, Barbara was quick to provide the first suggestion. “I think we should work on developing an open-ended questionnaire that we could use to interview employees about their level of satisfaction.”

Juan thought for a moment and said, “I’m not so sure. That sounds like a lot of work, not only in developing the interview questions, but also in summarizing the results across employees. I think we should develop a number of opinion statements related to job satisfaction. For each statement, we could ask employees to indicate the degree to which they agree or disagree.” 

“I don’t know if that would work,” argued Barbara. “I think the use of open-ended questions presented in an interview format would better capture exactly what people are and are not happy about with their jobs, as well as provide some indication as to why they feel the way they do. By determining what influences job satisfaction, we might be able to implement some organizational changes to increase job satisfaction.” 

“Is why the employees are happy relevant?” queried Juan. “Our assignment is to determine the degree to which SAVECO’s employees are satisfied, not to determine why they are happy or not.” 

Barbara frowned. “I’m not so certain about that. Just knowing the degree of job satisfaction of the workforce seems silly. I think we need to include some assessment of what influences job satisfaction.” 

“Well,” interjected Juan, “maybe we should be even more concerned with which aspects of their work employees are satisfied. Isn’t it possible that employees are satisfied with some aspects of their jobs at SAVECO, and dissatisfied with other parts of their jobs? For example, can’t employees be happy with their supervisor, but dissatisfied with their pay?” 

“You are right there,” Barbara agreed. “Perhaps we need to think this through a bit more before getting started.”

Questions 

1. As an alternative to developing a new measure of job satisfaction, Juan and Barbara might have considered obtaining an existing measure for use at SAVECO. What advantages and disadvantages might there be to

(a) Using a preexisting measure versus

(b) Creating a new measure of job satisfaction?

2. Is job satisfaction a one-dimensional or a multidimensional construct? How might the answer to this question impact the development of the job satisfaction measure?

3. How might the item format chosen to measure job satisfaction impact the

a. Administration of the measure?

b. Analysis of the data?

c. Findings of the investigation?

4. How might the development of clear test specifications help Barbara and Juan avoid their conflict?

5. What sources of additional information regarding the measurement of job satisfaction might Juan and Barbara seek prior to developing test items?