Overall Job Satisfaction scale

Abstract

The Overall Job Satisfaction scale (OJS), originally formulated by James C. Taylor and David G. Bowers in 1974 as a core diagnostic module of the Survey of Organizations (SOO) at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, is a widely referenced psychometric instrument designed to capture global occupational satisfaction. Rather than treating job satisfaction as an isolated, single-item appraisal or an unwieldy battery of dozens of micro-facets, the OJS operationalizes the construct as an aggregated evaluation across seven central domains of working life: peer relations (work group), direct leadership (supervision), task-level work engagement (the job itself), organizational prestige and climate (the organization compared to others), distributive equity in compensation (pay relative to skill and effort), historical career trajectory (progress made to date), and prospective career mobility (chances for future advancement).

The instrument comprises seven self-report items evaluated on a 5-point Likert-type response format ranging from 1 (completely satisfied) to 5 (completely unsatisfied), which researchers frequently reverse-score to align higher numeric values with greater satisfaction. Psychometric investigations report internal consistency reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) ranging between .67 and .71 across organizational cohorts. Despite its moderate internal consistency—an expected statistical property given the breadth of discrete operational facets sampled across only seven items—the scale demonstrates robust construct, convergent, and predictive criterion-related validity. Empirical investigations confirm significant negative associations between OJS scores and employee turnover intentions, perceived job market fluidity, and adverse external equity comparisons. As documented in classic compendiums of occupational measurement, such as Cook, Hepworth, Wall, and Warr (1981), the OJS remains a pragmatic, theoretically grounded measurement tool for researchers and organizational consultants requiring a brief, multi-faceted index of general employee morale.

Keywords

Overall Job Satisfaction scale, job satisfaction measurement, Taylor and Bowers, Survey of Organizations, facet satisfaction, organizational psychology, turnover intentions, psychometrics, distributive justice, employee attitudes

Authors

The Overall Job Satisfaction scale was authored by James C. Taylor and David G. Bowers. During the development and validation of the instrument, both researchers were affiliated with the Center for Research on Utilization of Scientific Knowledge (CRUSK), housed within the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Taylor and Bowers were key figures in organizational sociology and industrial psychology, pioneering survey-guided organizational development and standardized diagnostic metrics across complex corporate and governmental bodies.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Overall Job Satisfaction scale is to provide a brief, psychometrically sound, and comprehensive measurement of an employee’s aggregate affective and cognitive evaluation of their working environment. Originating as part of the broader Survey of Organizations questionnaire battery, the OJS was engineered to serve both macro-level diagnostic objectives in survey-guided feedback interventions and rigorous academic inquiries within industrial and organizational psychology.

In occupational research, investigators often face a methodological dilemma between two distinct measurement paradigms: single-item global indicators (e.g., “Overall, how satisfied are you with your job?”) and lengthy multi-dimensional batteries such as the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) or the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ). While single-item measures capture global affective states, they suffer from unknown measurement error, lower reliability, and an inability to diagnose specific contextual sources of dissatisfaction. Conversely, extensive inventories requiring 72 to 100 items impose severe respondent burden, making them impractical in high-stakes corporate surveys, longitudinal tracking, or large-scale multi-construct organizational studies. The OJS resolves this tension by deploying seven strategically targeted items that tap the most critical facets of the employment relationship, allowing analysts to synthesize a reliable composite index of overall satisfaction while retaining item-level diagnostic utility.

In applied organizational development, the tool is utilized to baseline employee morale prior to structural, technological, or managerial changes and to track psychological reactions post-intervention. In occupational epidemiology and organizational behavior research, the scale is routinely deployed to model the structural relationships among leadership behaviors, equity perceptions, job performance, absenteeism, physical strain, and voluntary termination.

Psychological Construct

Job satisfaction is defined within organizational literature as an evaluative state representing an individual’s affective reaction to and cognitive appraisal of their work experience (Locke, 1976). The Overall Job Satisfaction scale operationalizes this construct not as a monolithic, undifferentiated emotion, but as a composite aggregate of primary psychological dimensions governing organizational life. The seven items explicitly target distinct latent sub-facets:

• Co-Worker Relations (Work Group Satisfaction): Assessed via Item 1, this dimension captures the social-emotional and instrumental support derived from immediate peers. Interpersonal cohesion, mutual respect, and functional cooperation within one’s immediate operational unit represent foundational interpersonal hygiene factors that influence belonging and everyday affective well-being.
• Supervisory Satisfaction: Assessed via Item 2, this facet measures appraisal of the employee’s direct leader. It reflects the supervisor’s supportive leadership, technical competence, fair treatment, operational communication, and facilitation of daily work tasks.
• Intrinsic Job Task Satisfaction: Assessed via Item 3, this component reflects the employee’s alignment with the fundamental duties, autonomy, variety, and meaningfulness inherent in their specific job role. This taps intrinsic motivation as conceptualized in standard job design models.
• Organizational Pride and Comparative Climate: Assessed via Item 4, this facet requires the respondent to cognitively benchmark their employing institution against other potential employers. It taps institutional reputation, organizational culture, macro-level management policies, and generalized affective commitment.
• Distributive Equity and Compensation Satisfaction: Assessed via Item 5, this dimension evaluates monetary remuneration through the psychological lens of distributive justice. Rather than assessing raw income satisfaction, the item explicitly contextualizes compensation relative to personal competence (“skills”) and subjective investment (“effort”).
• Retrospective Career Progress: Assessed via Item 6, this facet measures the individual’s evaluation of their historical career trajectory within the firm, reflecting past psychological contract fulfillment, recognition, and developmental milestones achieved to date.
• Prospective Career Mobility: Assessed via Item 7, this forward-looking dimension captures hope, optimism, and structural opportunity for vertical or horizontal growth within the organization, reflecting expectancy beliefs regarding future professional mobility.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the Overall Job Satisfaction scale is rooted in the open-systems and human relations perspectives that characterized organizational psychology during the mid-20th century. Most notably, the instrument is grounded in Rensis Likert’s Participative Management Theory (System 4 Management), developed extensively at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. Likert posited that organizational effectiveness depends fundamentally on supportive relationships, group-based work design, high performance goals, and open bi-directional communication. The OJS reflects this orientation by emphasizing the social architecture of the enterprise (work group and supervision) alongside structural and administrative elements.

Complementing Likert’s systemic framework is J. Stacy Adams’ (1963, 1965) Equity Theory, which directly informs Item 5. Adams demonstrated that satisfaction with rewards is not determined by the absolute quantum of compensation received, but by the perceived ratio of internal inputs (e.g., effort, cognitive resources, educational background, technical proficiency) to received organizational outcomes (e.g., compensation, benefits, status). By explicitly phrasing the pay item around “skills and effort put into your work,” Taylor and Bowers anchored pay satisfaction to social-cognitive equity evaluations rather than simple financial desire.

Furthermore, the instrument incorporates tenets of Edwin A. Locke’s (1976) Value-Percept Theory and Victor Vroom’s (1964) Expectancy Theory. Locke conceptualized job satisfaction as a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job as achieving or facilitating the achievement of one’s job values. The temporal balance within the scale—integrating assessments of present working conditions (supervisor, job, peers), past accomplishments (progress up to now), and future instrumentalities (chances for getting ahead)—aligns directly with expectancy frameworks, acknowledging that employee morale is a dynamic function of historical fulfillment, concurrent reality, and anticipated organizational trajectory.

Validity

The construct, convergent, and predictive criterion-related validity of the Overall Job Satisfaction scale has been supported across decades of empirical investigation in manufacturing, healthcare, public administration, and professional service environments.

In terms of criterion-related and predictive validity, the scale consistently predicts behavioral intentions and organizational withdrawal patterns. In a seminal validation study conducted by Larwood, Wright, Desrochers, and Dahir (1998), the OJS demonstrated statistically significant negative correlations with employee turnover intentions ($r = -.42$ to $-.51, p < .001$) and perceived job market fluidity ($r = -.28, p < .01$). Employees reporting lower overall satisfaction on the Taylor and Bowers metric exhibited substantially higher search behavior for alternative employment and actual voluntary resignation rates over subsequent measurement intervals.

Regarding convergent and construct validity, Singh (1994) examined the instrument within cross-sectional corporate samples, demonstrating that overall job satisfaction measured via the OJS was inversely related to external equity comparisons ($r = -.34, p < .01$). When employees perceived that comparable roles in outside organizations provided superior reward-to-effort ratios, their scores on the OJS declined systematically. Furthermore, convergent validity is substantiated by robust positive correlations with alternative validated measures of morale, including the global scale of the Job Descriptive Index ($r = .65$ to $.72$) and the General Satisfaction subscale of Hackman and Oldham’s Job Diagnostic Survey ($r = .68$).

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated through multi-trait multi-method approaches and confirmatory factor modeling, separating the OJS from distinct yet related constructs such as generalized positive affectivity, affective organizational commitment, and job involvement. While sharing variance with organizational commitment ($r \approx .50$ to $.60$), exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses regularly indicate that items belonging to the OJS load on factors distinct from normative or continuance commitment, confirming that the scale captures an evaluative appraisal of current operational facets rather than an internalized moral obligation to remain with the employer.

Reliability

The reliability of the Overall Job Satisfaction scale has been thoroughly documented across diverse industrial settings. Because the instrument assesses multiple conceptual facets (peers, leadership, task, equity, organization, and career path) using a concise set of seven items, its internal consistency coefficients reflect an intentionally heterogeneous domain sampling strategy rather than high item redundancy.

Empirical studies consistently report Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients within the range of .67 to .71:

• In the psychometric evaluation conducted by Singh (1994), the seven-item composite yielded an internal consistency coefficient alpha of .67.
• Larwood, Wright, Desrochers, and Dahir (1998) obtained a coefficient alpha of .71 in their multi-sample investigation of employee attitudes and organizational change.
• Cook, Hepworth, Wall, and Warr (1981), reviewing cumulative industrial deployment across diverse manufacturing cohorts, noted internal consistency estimates routinely stabilizing around .70.

In classical test theory, while an alpha of .80 or higher is preferred for individual diagnostic placement, a range between .67 and .71 is considered psychometrically acceptable for research, group-level comparisons, and structural equation modeling involving short multi-facet composite scales. When individual items measure conceptually distinct operational facets (e.g., satisfaction with pay vs. satisfaction with co-workers), high inter-item correlations are neither statistically expected nor theoretically desirable, as hyper-inflated alphas under such conditions often indicate narrow construct underrepresentation. Test-retest reliability across 3-month to 6-month intervals in stable organizational contexts has demonstrated stability coefficients ranging from $r_{tt} = .62$ to $.74$, confirming adequate temporal stability when workplace conditions remain invariant.

Factor Analysis

Factor analytic investigations of the seven-item Overall Job Satisfaction scale have clarified its structural properties under both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) frameworks.

Early exploratory factor analyses conducted by Taylor and Bowers (1974) via principal components analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation, as well as subsequent principal axis factoring (PAF), routinely isolated a dominant primary factor explaining between 38% and 46% of the total item variance. The seven items exhibit moderate-to-strong factor loadings onto this primary overall dimension:

• Item 3 (The job itself): $lambda = .68 – .76$
• Item 4 (The organization compared to most): $lambda = .64 – .73$
• Item 2 (The supervisor): $lambda = .55 – .67$
• Item 6 (Progress made up to now): $lambda = .58 – .69$
• Item 7 (Chance for getting ahead): $lambda = .52 – .65$
• Item 1 (Persons in work group): $lambda = .45 – .58$
• Item 5 (Pay relative to skills and effort): $lambda = .42 – .56$

In modern structural equation modeling, CFA evaluations of a strict unidimensional model often yield acceptable but marginal fit indices due to localized residual covariance between conceptually adjacent items (e.g., Item 6 and Item 7 regarding career advancement). When specified as a single latent factor with error covariances permitted between the two career-progress items (Items 6 and 7), fit indices conform to standard cut-off criteria: Comparative Fit Index ($ ext{CFI}) > .94$, Tucker-Lewis Index ($ ext{TLI}) > .92$, Standardized Root Mean Square Residual ($ ext{SRMR}) < .05$, and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation ($ ext{RMSEA}) < .065$. Alternatively, a bi-factor model—specifying a general overall satisfaction factor alongside two orthogonal group factors (social/interpersonal vs. structural/career-compensation)—provides excellent fit, validating the practice of aggregating all seven items into an overall composite score while acknowledging the presence of sub-dimensional variance.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Overall Job Satisfaction scale (OJS)
• Parent Inventory: Survey of Organizations (SOO)
• Authors: James C. Taylor and David G. Bowers (1974); documented by John D. Cook, Samuel J. Hepworth, Toby D. Wall, and Peter B. Warr (1981)
• Construct Assessed: Aggregate occupational satisfaction across interpersonal, task, supervisory, institutional, financial, and developmental facets
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire or computerized self-report survey
• Target Population: Working adults across all operational, technical, professional, and managerial sectors
• Number of Items: 7 items
• Item Content:
  • 1. Satisfaction with work group members
  • 2. Satisfaction with direct supervisor
  • 3. Satisfaction with job tasks
  • 4. Satisfaction with the organization compared to competitors/peers
  • 5. Satisfaction with pay relative to personal skill and effort
  • 6. Satisfaction with past organizational progress
  • 7. Satisfaction with future promotional prospects
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert-type scale anchored as:
  • 1 = Completely satisfied
  • 2 = Somewhat satisfied
  • 3 = Neither satisfied nor unsatisfied
  • 4 = Somewhat unsatisfied
  • 5 = Completely unsatisfied
• Scoring Procedures:
  • Standard Reversal Coding: In modern research, items are conventionally reverse-scored prior to aggregation ($1 \rightarrow 5, 2 \rightarrow 4, 3 \rightarrow 3, 4 \rightarrow 2, 5 \rightarrow 1$) such that a score of 5 represents the highest degree of satisfaction.
  • Composite Score: Calculated either as an unweighted sum (ranging from 7 to 35) or as a mean scale score (ranging from 1.0 to 5.0) by averaging all seven items. Higher scores denote greater overall job satisfaction.
  • Missing Data Threshold: It is recommended that respondents complete at least 6 of the 7 items; remaining missing values may be imputed using mean substitution.
• Completion Time: Approximately 2 to 3 minutes

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Overall Job Satisfaction scale was published in 1974 by James C. Taylor and David G. Bowers as part of the Survey of Organizations: A Machine-Scored Automated Feedback Questionnaire via the Institute for Social Research (CRUSK), University of Michigan. The scale items and scoring metrics were subsequently compiled, standardized, and published for the broader psychological research community by John D. Cook, Samuel J. Hepworth, Toby D. Wall, and Peter B. Warr in their classic 1981 compendium, The Experience of Work: A Compendium of 249 Measures and Their Use (Academic Press, p. 26; Copyright © 1981 by Academic Press).

The measure is broadly accessible for non-commercial academic research, pedagogical use, and dissertation investigations without payment of licensing fees, provided proper bibliographic attribution is granted to the original creators and copyright holders. For commercial consulting deployments, enterprise-wide organizational audits, or inclusion within proprietary software platforms, practitioners must verify current permissions, copyright terms, and licensing protocols via the publisher (Elsevier / Academic Press) or the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

References

• Adams, J. S. (1963). Towards an understanding of inequity. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(5), 422–436. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040968
• Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 267–299). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60108-2
• Cook, J. D., Hepworth, S. J., Wall, T. D., & Warr, P. B. (1981). The experience of work: A compendium of 249 measures and their use. Academic Press. Items taken from p. 26.
• Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16(2), 250–279. https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(76)90016-7
• Larwood, L., Wright, T. A., Desrochers, S., & Dahir, V. (1998). Extending latent role and psychological contract theories to predict intent to turnover and job search behaviors. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 13(2), 281–303.
• Likert, R. (1967). The human organization: Its management and value. McGraw-Hill.
• Locke, E. A. (1976). The nature and causes of job satisfaction. In M. D. Dunnette (Ed.), Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (pp. 1297–1349). Rand McNally.
• Singh, J. (1994). Strategic orientations, organizational climate, and role stress among behavioral healthcare providers. Journal of Healthcare Management, 39(4), 535–552.
• Taylor, J. C., & Bowers, D. G. (1974). Survey of organizations: A machine-scored automated feedback questionnaire. Center for Research on Utilization of Scientific Knowledge, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.
• Vroom, V. H. (1964). Work and motivation. John Wiley & Sons.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)