A Specification Issue in Job Satisfaction Research

Prevailing theories of job satisfaction assume that the pursuit of job satisfaction is an important employment goal to workers. The central questions asked here are as follows: (1) Is this assumption tenable? (2) What effects do the violation of this assumption have on the testing of popular models in job satisfaction research? Using data representative of registered nurses in a large metropolitan area, it was found that only about half of the workers rank the pursuit of job satisfaction highly among the employment goals relevant to their work places. Furthermore, it was found that much more variance can be explained in job satisfaction among workers who value increased job satisfaction highly than can be explained among workers who do not value it as highly. When workers' value for increased job satisfaction is used as a moderator variable, it is found to have methodological and substantive significance for the sort of evidence that can be obtained using standard models of job satisfaction.