and Kozak 2007; Chiang and Jang 2008; Deery 2008; Erkutlu 2008; Øgaard et al.
2008; Tsai 2008; Fei-Chuan et al. 2009; Kuruüzüm et al. 2009; Yang 2010).
These studies have measured the relationships between job satisfaction and a
number of other variables including organisational commitment (Hawkins and Lee
1990; Susskind et al. 2000b; Chiang and Jang 2008; Kuruüzüm et al. 2009),
turnover (Susskind et al. 2000a; Carbery et al. 2003), empowerment (Chiang and
Jang 2008) and leadership (Tutuncu and Kozak 2007).
The seventeen hospitality studies above utilised a range of psychometric tools to
measure job satisfaction (JS). An analysis of the articles revealed that:
six of the studies had used a measure (drawn from the general organisational
psychology literature) that none of the other hospitality studies had used;
two (Kim et al. 2005; Kuruüzüm et al. 2009) had adapted a five-item scale
from Lytle (1994);
two (Susskind et al. 2000a; Susskind et al. 2000b) had used a three-item JS
scale drawn from Hackman and Oldham’s (1975) Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS);
and
four (Borchgrevink and Boster 1994; Tutuncu and Kozak 2007; Chiang and
Jang 2008; Tsai 2008) had drawn on the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) developed
by (Smith et al. 1969) to create adapted scales with varying numbers of items.
The most frequently-used item scale, then, was Smith et al.’s (1969) Job
Description Index (JDI) and this reflects the JDI’s pre-eminent position as the
most-used measure of job satisfaction in the wider organisational studies
literature (Ironson et al. 1989: 193). In its entirety, the JDI consists of 73 items
which are allocated across 5 sub-scales designed to measure five factors:
Salary: Satisfaction regarding salary
Job: Satisfaction level towards the work itself – the job tasks
Position advancement: Satisfaction regarding promotion opportunities
Supervisor: Satisfaction regarding direct supervisors
Co-workers: Satisfaction level towards co-workers
In the four hospitality studies measuring job satisfaction based on the JDI: Tsai
(2008) used all 73 items; Tutuncu and Kozak (2007) used a 26-item adaption;
Borchgrevink and Boster (1994) used a truncated 8-item version drawn from the
18 - item Job sub-scale (see below); and Chiang and Jang (2008) used an even
shorter three-item scale drawn from the JDI.