“Based on how you feel regarding different aspects in the scope of your work, several options are presented (from Very Dissatisfied to Very Satisfied) among which you will position yourself, marking with an X the box that best represents your opinion.“
The Overall Job Satisfaction Scale was developed by Warr, Cook and Wall in 1979. The characteristics of this scale are the following:
- It is a scale that operationalizes the construct of job satisfactionreflecting workers’ experience of paid employment.
- Collect the emotional response to the content of the work itself.
Keep reading this Psychology-Online article if you want to know more about the General Job Satisfaction Scale.
General characteristics
This scale was created after detecting the need for short and robust scales that could be easily completed by all types of workers regardless of their training. Based on the existing literature, a pilot study and two investigations on workers in the manufacturing industry in the United Kingdom, the scale was formed with the fifteen final items.
The scale is in line with those who establish a dichotomy of factors and is designed to address both intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of working conditions. It is made up of two subscales:
- Intrinsic factors subscale: It addresses aspects such as the recognition obtained for the work, responsibility, promotion, aspects related to the content of the task, etc. This scale is made up of seven items (numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14).
- Extrinsic factors subscale: It investigates the worker’s satisfaction with aspects related to work organization such as hours, remuneration, physical working conditions, etc. This scale is made up of eight items (numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15).
Application
This scale can be administered by an interviewer but one of its advantages is the possibility of being self-completed and of being applied collectively.
Its brevity, having the response alternatives specified, the possibility of a simple assignment of numerical weights to each response alternative and its simple vocabulary make it a scale of application not restricted to anyone in particular (as long as it has an elementary level of reading comprehension and vocabulary) and for which specially qualified test administrators are not required.
It is advisable guarantee anonymityespecially in work contexts in which its absence can be foreseen as a factor that can generate disturbances in the responses.
The instructions that the interviewer must give to those who complete the scale must be in a tone of neutrality that does not favor bias in the responses. As a guideline, the following formulation is proposed:
‘Based on how you feel about different aspects of your work, several options are presented (Very satisfied…) among which you will position yourself, marking with an X the box that best represents your opinion.’
Completion
Those who complete the scale must indicate, for each of the fifteen itemshis degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, ranking on a seven-point scale: Very dissatisfied, Dissatisfied, Moderately dissatisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, Moderately satisfied, Satisfied, Very satisfied.
Test correction
This scale allows obtaining three scores, corresponding to:
- Overall satisfaction.
- Extrinsic satisfaction.
- Intrinsic satisfaction.
This is an additive scale, in which the total score is obtained from the sum of the respondent’s positions in each of the fifteen items, assigning a value of 1 to Very dissatisfied and correlatively until assigning a value of 7 to Very Satisfied. The total score on the scale ranges from 15 to 105, so a higher score reflects greater overall satisfaction.
Whenever possible the separate use of the subscales is recommended intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction. Its correction is identical to that of the general scale although, due to its shorter length, its values range between 7 and 49 (intrinsic satisfaction) and 8 and 56 (extrinsic satisfaction).
Assessment
The High scores indicate a high level of satisfaction.
These scores do not usually incorporate great precision in that their basis lies in subjective judgments and personal appreciations on a more or less broad set of different aspects of the work environment and conditioned by the people’s own characteristics.
Therefore this scale does not allow establishing objective analyzes on the goodness or not of the working conditions. However, the scale is a good instrument for determining the personal experiences that workers have of these conditions.
As already indicated, the assessment can be done at three levels: general satisfaction, intrinsic satisfaction and extrinsic satisfaction.
It’s interesting obtaining these three indices for each area of an organization, by relatively homogeneous groups, so that possible problematic aspects can be quickly detected.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
If you want to read more articles similar to General job satisfaction scalewe recommend that you enter our category.