8/18/2017 A preliminary study to measure and develop job satisfaction scale for medical teachers

Ind Psychiatry J. 2011 Jul-Dec; 20(2): 9196. PMCID: PMC3530295

doi: 10.4103/0972-6748.102484

A preliminary study to measure and develop job satisfaction scale for

medical teachers
Kavita Bhatnagar, Kalpana Srivastava,1 Amarjit Singh,2 and S.L. Jadav3

Department of Ophthalmology, Pad Dr. D. Y. Patil Medical College, Pimpri, Pune, Maharashtra, India
1
Department of Psychiatry, Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, Maharashtra, India
2
Dean and Chairman, MET Cell, Pad Dr. D. Y. Patil Medical College, Pimpri, Pune, Maharashtra, India
3
Department of Community Medicine, MET Cell, Pad Dr. D. Y. Patil Medical College, Pimpri, Pune, Maharashtra, India
Address for correspondence: Dr. Kavita Bhatnagar, B4/21, Brahma Aangan,Off Salunke Vihar Road, Kondhwa, Pune - 411048,
Maharashtra, India. E-mail: rajankavita12@rediffmail.com

Copyright : Industrial Psychiatry Journal

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract Go to:

Background:
Job satisfaction of medical teachers has an impact on quality of medical education and patient care. In
this background, the study was planned to develop scale and measure job satisfaction status of medical
teachers.

Materials and Methods:

To generate items pertaining to the scale of job satisfaction, closed-ended and open-ended
questionnaires were administered to medical professionals. The job satisfaction questionnaire was
developed and rated on Likert type of rating scale. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used
to ascertain job satisfaction among 245 health science faculty of an autonomous educational institution.
Factor loading was calculated and final items with strong factor loading were selected. Data were
statistically evaluated.

Results:
Average job satisfaction score was 53.97 on a scale of 1100. The Cronbach's alpha reliability
coefficient was 0.918 for entire set of items. There was statistically significant difference in job
satisfaction level across different age groups (P 0.0358) showing a U-shaped pattern and fresh entrants
versus reemployed faculty (P 0.0188), former showing lower satisfaction. Opportunity for self-
development was biggest satisfier, followed by work, opportunity for promotion, and job security.
Factors contributing toward job dissatisfaction were poor utilization of skills, poor promotional
prospects, inadequate pay and allowances, work conditions, and work atmosphere.

Conclusion:
Tertiary care teaching hospitals in autonomous educational institutions need to build infrastructure and
create opportunities for their medical professional. Job satisfaction of young entrants needs to be raised

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8/18/2017 A preliminary study to measure and develop job satisfaction scale for medical teachers

further by improving their work environment. This will pave the way for effective delivery of health
care.

Keywords: Health science, job satisfaction, medical, teachers

Job satisfaction is defined as the positive personal perception toward work or work experiences.[1] It
has been variously linked with increased productivity/performance[2] and negatively with absenteeism
and turnover in an organization.[3] In a teaching hospital, where doctors are playing dual role of
teaching and patient care, this may have wider ramifications. The discontent of faculties may get
translated into their academic output and may influence the morale and attitudes of medical students to
the profession.[4] At the same time, poor job satisfaction of these physicians will adversely affect
patient care. The question at hand is to evaluate the motivation level of the doctors or other health care
professionals who hold the health of the public in their hands and shape the attitudes and aptitudes of
the budding generations. Based on the proposed report of MCI undergraduate education working group
2010, the most significant challenge for regulatory bodies has been to balance the need for more
medical colleges with the maintenance of quality standards.[5] In this regard, the job satisfaction of
medical teachers is perhaps not getting its due attention. Job satisfaction is very important but very less
studied issue.[4] More work needs to be done to link the perceptions of individual faculties with the
organizational context in which they work and with the wider political, economic, and social context of
medical education reforms. As a component of development of quality system in our organization, we
undertook this study to construct Job Satisfaction Profile of teaching faculty of all tertiary care health
science institutions of a private autonomous educational university and to evaluate their level of
satisfaction and to describe variables related to their job satisfaction.

Construct of job satisfaction: Theoretically, the model, which was taken as a background for the
development of the scale, is Job satisfaction and its modeling among township health care employees:
a quantitative study in poor rural China. The construct is based on factors as given below:

Professional practice environment; personal attitudinal factors; organizational factors of social support;
job competency; welfare measures; job reward; motivation and work enthusiasm.

The framework of our research is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1
Research framework of job satisfaction among health science
faculty

MATERIALS AND METHODS Go to:

The study was conducted between July 2010 and February 2011 using an English language, self-
administered anonymous questionnaire. Initially, items comprising four domains were extracted with
the help of in-house group discussion and brain storming of health care professionals. The scale was
subsequently administered to 25 experts for further generation and expert validation of items. Finally,
245 questionnaires were distributed to various colleges, out of which 163 were received back, at a
response rate of 66.53%. The faculty members included professors, associate professors lecturers (all
having postgraduate degrees), and tutors (having MBBS degree or diploma in their respective
specialty), working in health science institutions (i.e., medical, dental, homeopathic, and ayurvedic

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colleges). We promised keeping secrets of personal information of all the subjects. Therefore, this
study did not harm the ethics of subjects.

Questionnaire
The questionnaire was designed after detailed discussions with a group of hospital administrators,
doctors, and sociologists and subjected to a pilot trial and expert validation. It contained six
components:

1. Personal factors of educational level and sociodemographic characteristics, consisting questions

regarding age, sex, qualifications, teaching experience, designation, and occupational history
2. Continuing education credits in academics and nonacademic achievements
3. Perceived competence as per job requirement
4. Job satisfaction-related questions consisting of statements related to personal attitudinal factors
5. Job satisfaction-related questions consisting of statements related to organizational factors of
social support
6. Job satisfaction-related questions consisting of statements related to professional practice
environment to which the participants were required to indicate their agreement or disagreement
by responding in the affirmative or negative.

It is measured on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (extremely dissatisfied) to 5 (extremely satisfied) [

Table 1]. Besides, job satisfaction questionnaire and qualitative data were also elicited using open-
ended elicited questions on their perception regarding factors contributing to job satisfaction/job
dissatisfaction.

Table 1
Variables involved in each principal factor and their factor
loadings

Participants were informed about the study objectives and procedures, and the purpose for which data
was being collected. Confidentiality of data was assured.

Data analysis

The completed forms were analyzed using SPSS package and epi-Info.

Standard 5-point likert-type scale

Staff satisfaction is typically rated on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (extremely dissatisfied to 5
(extremely satisfied). And the standard satisfaction scale ranging from 1 to 5 were converted into 0 to
100 scales using a formula as given below.

AdjSS = 100 (stdSS-1)/(5-1)

Where adjSS and stdSS are adjusted satisfaction score and standard satisfaction score,
respectively.

With the new scoring meth0od, job satisfaction fell into five categories: extremely dissatisfied
(adjSS: 1029), dissatisfied (3049), generally satisfied or not (5069), satisfied (7089), and
extremely satisfied (90100).[6]

Exploratory factor analysis

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Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed to identify common factors that can cover all aspects
of job satisfaction of the respondants by using principal component analysis and equamox rotation.
Based on scree plot seven common factors were than variables having more than one (compo) were
excluded. Also variables that did not have strong loading (eigenvalue <0.44) were also excluded.
Finally, variables with strong loading were taken for analysis. Seven factors with cumulative initial
eigenvalue being 88.86% were extracted after analysis.

RESULTS Go to:

KMO and Barlett's test

It shows adequate sample size with KaiserMeyerOlkin measure of sampling adequacy of 0.855.

Reliability
Statistics was based on all cases with valid data for all variables in the procedure. User-defined missing
values were treated as missing. Out of 162 cases, 154 (95.1%) cases were valid and 8 (4.9%) were
excluded. The Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient was 0.918 for entire 33 set of items.

Demographic characteristics
In this study, 162 health science professionals, including 84 (47.85%) females and 78 (51.53%) men
working as teaching faculty in health science colleges including medical, dental, ayurvedic, and college
of homeopathy, took part in the investigation. The response rate for medical college was 82%,
homeopathy 80%, dental college 53.68%, and 40% for Ayurvedic College. The Cronbach's alpha
reliability coefficient was 0.937 for entire set of items. The respondents were divided into five age
groups as shown in Table 2. Maximum response was from the teachers aged 2535 followed by 3645
years age group.

Table 2
Demographic characteristics associated with faculty job
satisfaction

Common factors of job satisfaction

Based on scree plot, seven components were identified with initial Eigenvalue of 1. All the variables
were loaded onto these seven components [Table 1]. All variables showed high loadings (Eigenvalue
>0.400).The final rotated matrix was taken for analysis. The first factor related to professional practice
environment included nine items; the second factor concerning personal attitudinal factors involved
eight items; the third factor regarding organizational factors of social support had six items; the forth
factor about job competency consisted of two items; the fifth factor relating to welfare measures
contained three items; the sixth factor about job reward included three items; and the seventh factor
concerning motivation and work enthusiasm contained four items.

Job satisfaction scores

The scores of job satisfaction of all the subjects are listed in Table 3. Arithmetic mean of job
satisfaction score of all the health science faculties was 53.97 equivalent to generally satisfied or not
on Likert scale. The average job satisfaction score of medical college faculty was 58.59; suggesting job
satisfaction was higher among medical college faculty when compared with the health science faculties
taken together (P 0.0010). Scores reflecting personal attitudinal factors, professional practice
environment, and job competency were highest, with their arithmetic means being 72.879, 62.39, and

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63.58, respectively. Welfare measures and job reward were lowest, with corresponding average score
being 39.74 and 46.4.

Table 3
Job satisfaction scores in 7 job satisfaction domains

Demographic characteristics associated with faculty job satisfaction

There is statistically significant difference in job satisfaction level across various health science
colleges (P 0.0010) and across different age groups (P 0.0358) as shown in Table 2. Overall
satisfaction level is highest for medical college followed by Homeopathy College among all health
science faculties. Satisfaction level is low in <35 years and >65 years age group, it is higher for 3645
years and 5665 years of age, and is in between for 4655 years of age. Married people were more
satisfied than unmarried with a P value of 0.0073, which is statistically significant. There is statistically
significant difference in job satisfaction level based on occupational history (P 0.0188). There is no
statistically significant difference in the satisfaction level among the faculty based on their, sex, years
of service, profession of spouse, or designation although the level of overall satisfaction is lower
among associate professors.

Qualitative analysis
As qualitative data Table 4 was also elicited from a randomly selected group in our institution using
open-ended questions on respondent's perception regarding factors contributing to job
satisfaction/dissatisfaction, majority (90.5%) opined that most important factor contributing toward job
satisfaction was opportunity for self-development. Other factors were work itself (70.6%), opportunity
for promotion (70%), and job security (50%) in that order. Factors contributing toward job
dissatisfaction were poor utilization of skills (80.7%), poor promotional prospects (79.2%), inadequate
pay and allowances (78%), work conditions and atmosphere (77%), organization policy and
administration (68.8%), and inadequate redressal of grievances (60.5%).

Table 4
Factors mentioned by academician-clinicians as contributing
toward job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction

DISCUSSION Go to:

The government of India recognizes Health for All as a national goal and expects medical training to
produce capable Physicians of First Contact toward meeting this goal. However, the Indian health
care and medical education is facing systems and standards challenges.[5] The changing scenario in
health manpower, rapid advances in medical technology, changing modalities of therapeutic practice
and growing health awareness among clients, demand for a holistic approach toward job satisfaction,
and motivation of clinicians working in academic institutions.[7]

According to previous reports, job satisfaction is associated with a wide array of factors, including
organizational factors such as job reward and work conditions and personal factors like sense of work
achievements and work enthusiasm.[810] In our study, EFA was conducted and seven common
factors were identified, which covered virtually all job satisfaction-related factors, such as professional
practice environment, personal attitudinal factors, organizational factors of social support, job
competency, welfare measures, job reward, motivation, and work enthusiasm. As compared with JDI
that contains five domains (work, compensation, promotion opportunities, superiors, and coworkers)
[11] our self-designed questionnaire was more comprehensive. Our study showed that the job

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satisfaction model in this study was more reliable (the Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient was
0.918). Our study provides a good starting point for further development of standard scale for
measuring job satisfaction of health science faculties in teaching institutions in India.

In the study, we found that the mean score of job satisfaction of health science faculties was 53.97,
which was at generally satisfied or not level on Likert's scale. We also found that most faculties
considered their job of importance. What they felt most dissatisfied with were work rewards (i.e.,
welfare, pay, and promotion opportunity), working conditions, and sense of work achievements.[8]
Herzberg believed that pay, work conditions, job security, and relation with colleagues are essential
factors that dictate job satisfaction.[12] Moreover, failure to meet the demands of employees in these
regards will lead to complaints. Moreover, job satisfaction was found to be inversely related with
turnover of employees,[13] i.e., poor job satisfaction is linked to high turnover.[14] If most employees,
especially backbone ones, in any tertiary care hospital intend to quit, the result will be disastrous.

Personal factors, such as age, gender, marital status, and spouse being professional or not, also have
impact on job satisfaction. According to previous reports, females tend to be more satisfied with their
job than males,[15] and a U-shaped relation was observed between age and job satisfaction.[16] Our
results were consistent with these findings.

Midcareer professionals in our series were the least satisfied with their job. However, these caregivers
are the main force of the institution and care more about their work environment and professional
development. Therefore, policy makers should address their demands and concerns to bring their
talents into full play.

At present, it is necessary to design a well-tailored job satisfaction instrument for health care
professionals in India. This study is a preliminary effort to achieve this goal. Compared with the JDI
instrument,[11] which has 14 items, and the JSS instrument[17,18] that consists of 10 items, our self-
designed questionnaire is relatively more comprehensive but more complicated and time consuming
which may pose problem with busy medical professionals. Additionally, because the sample size of our
study was comparatively small, studies of large cohorts need to be conducted to further revise and
perfect this questionnaire.

The response rate (66.53%) in our study was lower than that (90.5) reported by Liu et al,[6] Yin et al
(81.2%)[19] by Nicholas et al. (75%),[11] and Magne et al. (73%)[17] This could be because people do
not have faith that something positive would come out of this study.

There are still some limitations with the research. This investigation had no baseline data for
comparison. Further studies with greater sample size are required toward extrapolation of our findings.

CONCLUSIONS Go to:

There is no study available on medical professional in terms with the standard measure to evaluate the
same. The questionnaire developed out of the work is a good tool to be used in the medical scenario
with adequate reliability and validity. The present study is unique as this has been done on health care
providers and has yielded some significant findings. Job satisfaction is a multidimensional
phenomenon with a number of factors operating simultaneously. Job satisfaction level across different
age groups (P 0.0358) showed a U-shaped pattern and fresh entrants showed lower satisfaction when
compare with reemployed faculty (P 0.0188). Tertiary care teaching hospitals in autonomous
educational institutions need to build infrastructure and create opportunities for their faculties. To
enhance their job satisfaction, authorities should take measures to improve work conditions, raise work
rewards, and pay more attention to the professional development of their employees. Fixed criteria
based and transparent promotion policy should be developed. Further, in this connection, personal audit

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on a regular basis may be considered. Second line of leadership should be developed where full time
junior capable faculties are considered.

Footnotes Go to:

Source of Support: Dr. D. Y. Patil Vidyapeeth, Pune

Conflict of Interest: None declared

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