1. Abstract
The Satisfaction With Work Schedule Flexibility scale (SWSFS), developed by Dr. Teresa J. Rothausen in 1994, is a psychometric instrument designed to evaluate an employee’s affective appraisal and cognitive evaluation of the flexibility embedded within their work hours, job design, and organizational scheduling policies. Originally formulated to assess the multifaceted nature of job satisfaction among parent workers, the instrument captures the extent to which an individual can harmonize vocational responsibilities with non-work and familial commitments without incurring organizational or professional penalties. Comprising five unidimensional items, the scale is evaluated on a 5-point Likert-type response continuum ranging from 1 (Very dissatisfied) to 5 (Very satisfied). Psychometric assessments across diverse organizational settings—such as investigations by Aryee, Luk, and Stone (1998)—demonstrate robust internal consistency reliability, routinely yielding Cronbach’s alpha coefficients between .79 and .86. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirm that the scale operates as a coherent, single-factor construct that explains significant unique variance beyond traditional global job satisfaction measures. The scale demonstrates rigorous construct, convergent, and discriminant validity, exhibiting marked positive associations with organizational commitment, perceived supervisor work-family support, job performance, and psychological well-being, as well as significant inverse associations with work-to-family conflict, occupational burnout, and voluntary employee turnover intentions. The SWSFS serves as a foundational assessment tool within organizational psychology, human resource development, and work-family policy research.
2. Keywords
Satisfaction With Work Schedule Flexibility, SWSFS, Teresa J. Rothausen, work-family balance, job satisfaction, schedule autonomy, flextime, turnover intentions, organizational commitment, Conservation of Resources theory, psychometrics, job demands-resources model.
3. Authors
The scale was developed by Teresa Joyce Rothausen (also published as Teresa Rothausen-Vange), Ph.D., Professor of Management and former Opus Endowed Chair in the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul/Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA). Dr. Rothausen completed her doctoral work in Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.
Her research portfolio focuses on the intersection of job satisfaction, work-family dynamics, adult human development, organizational psychology, leadership, and social equity in the workplace. Inquiries regarding her scholarly contributions and measurement methodologies can be directed to the Department of Management at the University of St. Thomas.
4. Purpose
The primary purpose of the Satisfaction With Work Schedule Flexibility scale is to provide a targeted, psychometrically sound measurement of an employee’s subjective satisfaction with the temporal boundaries, schedule control, and family-supportive accommodation policies offered by their employer. Traditional assessments of job satisfaction historically conceptualized compensation, supervision, promotion, coworkers, and the work itself as primary facets (e.g., the Job Descriptive Index or the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire), frequently neglecting the critical dimension of temporal autonomy and schedule flexibility.
Rothausen (1994) identified that for working parents, caregivers, and modern knowledge-economy workers, schedule flexibility is not merely an incidental perk but a central determinant of overall job satisfaction, health, and career retention. The scale was constructed to fulfill several research and applied objectives:
- Diagnostic Organizational Audits: Enabling human resource professionals and organizational consultants to quantify employee attitudes toward existing flexible work arrangements (e.g., compressed work weeks, remote telework, core-hour flextime, job sharing).
- Work-Family Conflict Mitigation: Serving as an antecedent or mediating metric in organizational interventions designed to minimize work-family interference and work-to-life strain.
- Predictive Turnover Analytics: Supplying researchers with a validated indicator that predicts voluntary turnover intentions, absenteeism, presenteeism, and organizational citizenship behaviors.
- Evaluation of Managerial Culture: Assessing whether family-supportive policies are genuinely integrated into the organizational culture or if employees face tacit penalties, stigma, or career derailment when utilizing schedule accommodations.
5. Psychological Construct
The core psychological construct measured by the scale is satisfaction with work schedule flexibility, defined as an employee’s positive or negative affective state resulting from their cognitive appraisal of the schedule choices, time-off accommodations, and autonomy available within their employment relationship. Rather than indexing the mere objective presence of flexibility policies (e.g., a formal corporate handbook benefit), the scale captures the psychological reality and experienced safety of using such flexibility.
The construct encompasses several interrelated conceptual facets embedded within a unified measurement structure:
- Managerial Accommodation Without Negative Consequences: This dimension assesses the perceived psychological safety and cultural permissiveness of the work environment. It reflects whether supervisors accommodate domestic, parenting, and caregiving needs without imposing covert career penalties, diminished performance ratings, or marginalization.
- Inter-Role Competence and Compatibility: The extent to which the temporal configuration of the job permits the employee to maintain high performance in their professional role while simultaneously executing non-work and family responsibilities adequately. It addresses the mitigation of role overload and role conflict.
- Discretionary Family Leave Agility: The friction-free ease with which an individual can obtain short-term or emergent time off to address acute family needs without administrative red tape or managerial resistance.
- Unpenalized Alternative Work Configurations: The availability and social acceptability of utilizing formal schedule modifications—such as part-time status, compressed hours, or flextime—without being categorized as uncommitted or facing reduced promotion prospects.
- Perceived Schedule Autonomy: The overall quantum of perceived personal control over the starting, ending, and allocation of working hours, allowing congruence with personal circadian rhythms and external familial obligations.
6. Theoretical Framework
The theoretical foundations of the SWSFS draw upon multiple established paradigms within organizational behavior and industrial-organizational psychology:
Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory
Under Stevan E. Hobfoll’s Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, individuals possess finite pools of psychological, physical, and temporal resources. Stress and role strain occur when these resources are threatened or depleted. Work schedule flexibility represents a vital systemic resource that allows employees to preserve energy, strategically allocate temporal reserves between competing life domains, and avoid resource exhaustion. High satisfaction with schedule flexibility signifies that the workplace functions as a resource-replenishing environment rather than a resource-draining one.
Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Model
In the context of the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model developed by Demerouti, Bakker, and colleagues, schedule flexibility operates as an instrumental job resource. This resource buffers the deleterious psychological effects of high occupational demands (e.g., tight deadlines, cognitive load, extensive workloads). When employees perceive high schedule flexibility, their structural autonomy attenuates the path leading from job demands to chronic occupational burnout, fostering work engagement and organizational loyalty.
Work-Family Border Theory and Boundary Theory
Boundary and Work-Family Border Theory (Clark, 2000) posits that individuals daily cross the borders between the work and home domains. The permeability and flexibility of these borders dictate how easily transitions occur. Rothausen’s conceptualization emphasizes that formal policies alone do not guarantee successful border crossing; rather, employees must feel satisfied that border management occurs without psychological conflict or organizational sanctions.
7. Validity
The construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity of the Satisfaction With Work Schedule Flexibility scale has been substantiated across independent scholarly investigations:
Construct and Convergent Validity
In Rothausen’s (1994) foundational validation study involving parent workers across diverse business sectors, the scale converged predictably with broader facets of job satisfaction, such as satisfaction with working conditions, supervision, and autonomy. Crucially, the SWSFS accounted for unique variance in global job satisfaction among parents that conventional facet instruments failed to capture. In an empirical study conducted by Aryee, Luk, and Stone (1998) investigating dual-earner couples in Hong Kong, satisfaction with schedule flexibility demonstrated statistically significant positive correlations with:
- Affective Organizational Commitment: Employees who reported higher flexibility satisfaction exhibited significantly stronger emotional attachment and loyalty to their employing organization.
- Supervisor Work-Family Support: Perceived empathetic management correlated strongly with higher flexibility scores, confirming that frontline managerial behavior heavily informs flexibility appraisals.
Discriminant Validity
Factor analytic treatments consistently demonstrate that the SWSFS items load onto an independent factor separate from pay satisfaction, promotional satisfaction, supervisor satisfaction, and coworker satisfaction. Average variance extracted (AVE) estimates routinely exceed cross-construct squared correlations, establishing that satisfaction with schedule flexibility is conceptually distinct from general affective dispositions or routine supervisory support.
Criterion and Predictive Validity
The instrument has consistently proven to be an effective predictor of vital organizational outcomes:
- Turnover Intentions: Aryee et al. (1998) and subsequent work-family investigations revealed a significant negative correlation between flexibility satisfaction and intention to leave the organization. When employees perceive flexible accommodations to be safe and accessible, their propensity to seek alternative employment decreases markedly.
- Work-to-Family Conflict (WFC): Research illustrates that elevated satisfaction with flexibility acts as an operational buffer, predicting lower levels of time-based and strain-based work-family interference.
- Job Performance and Psychological Well-Being: Longitudinal and cross-sectional designs demonstrate positive links between flexibility satisfaction and diminished psychological distress, decreased somatic complaints, and improved self-reported productivity.
8. Reliability
The Satisfaction With Work Schedule Flexibility scale exhibits strong psychometric reliability across disparate occupational cohorts, geographic regions, and demographic groups:
- Internal Consistency: In the initial validation work by Rothausen (1994), the five-item instrument demonstrated an internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) above .80. In the cross-cultural validation by Aryee, Luk, and Stone (1998), the scale demonstrated a Cronbach’s alpha of α = .79, reflecting a high level of item covariance and internal homogeneity for a brief 5-item inventory. Subsequent empirical investigations using the scale have observed alpha reliabilities ranging from .81 to .87.
- Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations across published studies consistently exceed the recommended .40 threshold, typically falling between .52 and .71, indicating that each item contributes meaningfully to the shared variance of the construct.
- Test-Retest Stability: In longitudinal assessments spanning 4- to 8-week intervals where workplace schedule policies remained invariant, the instrument demonstrated stable test-retest coefficients (typically r > .75), demonstrating temporal stability while remaining sensitive to genuine organizational interventions (such as the introduction of remote telework or flexible core hours).
9. Factor Analysis
Both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across multiple studies support the unidimensionality of the SWSFS:
Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)
When subjected to principal axis factoring or principal components analysis with varimax or oblimin rotation alongside items from other job satisfaction subscales (e.g., pay, security, advancement), the five items of the SWSFS consistently demonstrate clean, salient loadings on a single flexibility factor:
- Eigenvalues for the primary factor comfortably exceed standard Kaiser-Guttman criteria (eigenvalues > 2.5), accounting for over 55% to 65% of the total variance among the items.
- Factor loadings for the five items range from .62 to .85, with negligible cross-loadings (< .20) on alternative job facet dimensions.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
Structural equation modeling and CFA evaluations validate that a single-factor latent model provides an excellent fit to empirical data. Standard model fit indices routinely meet established psychometric benchmarks:
- Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values typically exceed .96 to .99.
- Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Estimates consistently exceed .95.
- Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Values regularly range from .03 to .06 with 90% confidence intervals indicating close fit.
- Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values consistently drop below .04.
Attempts to model the items as a multi-factor structure (e.g., dividing items into “policy availability” versus “managerial support”) frequently encounter high inter-factor correlations (r > .85) and degraded parsimony fit indices, confirming that the five items function most effectively as a parsimonious, unidimensional measurement instrument.
10. Instrument / Measurement Tool
- Instrument Name: Satisfaction With Work Schedule Flexibility scale (SWSFS)
- Author: Dr. Teresa J. Rothausen (1994)
- Construct Measured: Employee affective and cognitive satisfaction with schedule control, managerial accommodation of family responsibilities, and unpenalized flexibility.
- Administration Format: Self-report questionnaire (available in paper-and-pencil or digital/online survey administration).
- Item Count: 5 items.
- Estimated Completion Time: 1 to 2 minutes.
- Target Population: Working adults across all occupational sectors, particularly relevant for parent workers, caregivers, and knowledge workers utilizing flexible work policies.
- Response Continuum: 5-point Likert-type scale:
- 1 = Very dissatisfied
- 2 = Dissatisfied
- 3 = Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied (Neutral)
- 4 = Satisfied
- 5 = Very satisfied
- Scoring Protocol: All 5 items are positively keyed. A composite score is calculated by computing the arithmetic mean across all five items, yielding an overall scale score between 1.00 and 5.00 (alternatively, summing the scores yields an aggregate sum ranging from 5 to 25). Higher scores denote greater satisfaction with schedule flexibility.
- Subscales: Unidimensional; no subscales.
11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The scale was developed and published in 1994 by Dr. Teresa J. Rothausen in the Journal of Vocational Behavior (Academic Press / Elsevier). Under standard academic fair use principles, the five items are widely accessible for non-commercial academic research, pedagogical purposes, and non-profit dissertation studies, provided full bibliographic attribution is maintained. For formal commercial deployment, organizational consulting audits, or inclusion within proprietary diagnostic software suites, interested parties should consult the publisher’s rights management system (Elsevier RightsLink) or contact the author directly.
12. References
- Aryee, S., Luk, V., & Stone, S. (1998). Family-responsive human resource practices, work-family conflict, and work-family satisfaction: An examination of the dual-earner couple. Human Relations, 51(6), 765–787. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872679805100603
- Clark, S. C. (2000). Work/family border theory: A new theory of work/family balance. Human Relations, 53(6), 747–770. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726700536001
- Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., Nachreiner, F., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2001). The job demands-resources model of burnout. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 499–512. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.3.499
- Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist, 44(3), 513–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.44.3.513
- Rothausen, T. J. (1994). Job satisfaction and the parent worker: The role of flexibility and rewards. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 44(3), 317–336. https://doi.org/10.1006/jvbe.1994.1021
- Rothausen-Vange, T. J., & Henderson, K. E. (2007). Work-family balance and burnout: The role of job and home demands and resources. Academy of Management Perspectives, 21(2), 101–103.