An improved job dimension scale to measure job satisfaction in sales reps

Journal of the Academy of Business and Economics, March, 2004 by James H. Turner, Gene Brown

6. JOB SATISFACTION FACTOR ANALYSIS

It was decided to factor analyze the job satisfaction scale for at least three reasons. Because of the clear distinction made between intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction, because both scales were supplemented with extra items for this research, and because the implications drawn rely on the two distinct dimensions, factor analysis was utilized as a means of confirming the two dimensions.

Table IX is the resulting pattern matrix for the factor analysis completed utilizing maximum likelihood extraction and an Oblimin rotation with Kaiser Normalization.

This factor analysis developed five factors from the twenty-two job satisfaction scale items. These factors have been labeled here: autonomy, pay & benefits, pride, working conditions, and growth. Autonomy, pride, and growth clearly are elements of intrinsic job satisfaction. Equally clearly, the two remaining factors, pay & benefits and working conditions, are elements of extrinsic job satisfaction. Noticeably, two items from the original scale: "the public's attitude toward my company is good" and "the company's attitude toward my career is good" which were coded as extrinsic job satisfaction items loaded onto the pride dimension of intrinsic job satisfaction.

Moving these two items to intrinsic job satisfaction resulted in coefficient alphas of .88 for intrinsic job satisfaction, .88 for extrinsic job satisfaction and .93 for the combined job satisfaction scale. The means for the adjusted scales are 5.16 for extrinsic job satisfaction and 5.88 for intrinsic job satisfaction.

7. VALIDITY

Reliability is necessary to ensure that a scale has the properties of internal consistency to ensure that measures consistently. Scale validity, however, is the determination that the scale measures what it purports to measure. Validity, therefore, is a matter of ensuring that the measures developed by the scale fit within the web of relationships with other constructs as the definition and research suggest, i.e., nomological validity.

One approach to determining nomological validity it to show that the construct being measured relates to other constructs to which it is expected to relate (convergent validity) and that it does not relate to other contructs with which there is no theoretical connection. Referring to Appendix A, it can be seen that the constructs mentioned above as being correlated with job satisfaction show significant relationships are described (convergent validity). In addition, it can be seen that there is no correlation with constructs which have not been linked theoretically or empirically to job satisfaction. Here we used self monitoring (sin), age, and altruism (alt) to provide an attitude, an objective measure, and a personality characteristic which have not been linked to job satisfaction. They show no correlation to job satisfaction thereby providing a measure of discriminant validity.

One other commonly used indication of nomological validity is predictive validity, i.e., does the measure developed allow prediction of other construct measures. For example, if we tested the earlier results that job satisfaction and organizational commitment result in reduced intent-to-leave in this data set we find that: