Brief Overall Job Satisfaction Measures I&II

Abstract

Job satisfaction remains one of the most extensively researched organizational psychology constructs, representing an evaluative affective and cognitive response to one's work experience. The Brief Overall Job Satisfaction Measures I and II (BOJSM-I and BOJSM-II) represent two widely utilized psychometric instruments designed to assess global job satisfaction efficiently without imposing burdensome cognitive load or administrative fatigue on respondents. Originally conceptualized and popularized across organizational scholarship by Timothy A. Judge and colleagues, these measures provide parsimonious alternatives to lengthy facet-based batteries such as the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) or the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ). BOJSM-I comprises a tri-component composite format: a dichotomous overall satisfaction inquiry, a 5-point Likert-type global satisfaction item, and a percentage-based time allocation question assessing the proportion of time an employee feels satisfied, dissatisfied, and neutral on average. The three items are standardized and aggregated to create an index of global job attitudes. BOJSM-II is a psychometrically robust five-item global scale adapted directly from the classic 18-item index developed by Brayfield and Rothe (1951). Administered using a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7 (Strongly Agree), BOJSM-II incorporates balanced positive and reverse-coded statements to mitigate acquiescence bias. Across numerous empirical investigations, both measures demonstrate exceptional psychometric properties: internal consistency estimates routinely exceed α = .85 for BOJSM-II and composite reliabilities above .80 for BOJSM-I; confirmatory factor analyses affirm strict unidimensionality; and longitudinal evaluations establish robust convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity in relation to organizational citizenship behaviors, employee turnover intentions, objective job performance, core self-evaluations, and subjective well-being.

Keywords

Brief Overall Job Satisfaction Measures, BOJSM-I, BOJSM-II, global job satisfaction, Brayfield-Rothe index, Timothy A. Judge, subjective well-being, organizational attitudes, psychometrics, job performance

Authors

The development, adaptation, and extensive psychometric validation of the Brief Overall Job Satisfaction Measures are primarily credited to Timothy A. Judge and his research collaborators, building upon foundational psychometric work by Arthur H. Brayfield and Harold F. Rothe.

• Timothy A. Judge, Ph.D. – Professor of Management and Organization, Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA (formerly of the University of Florida and Cornell University). Renowned organizational psychologist specializing in personality, leadership, employee well-being, and work attitudes.
• Arthur H. Brayfield, Ph.D. (1915–2002) – Prominent American psychologist and former executive officer of the American Psychological Association (APA), whose 1951 publication established the foundational structural basis for global job satisfaction measurement.
• Harold F. Rothe, Ph.D. – Industrial psychologist and psychometrician who co-developed the Brayfield-Rothe Job Satisfaction Index (1951).
• Key Collaborators: John W. Boudreau, Ph.D. (University of Southern California); Robert D. Bretz, Ph.D.; Edwin A. Locke, Ph.D. (University of Maryland); Cathy C. Durham, Ph.D.; Avraham N. Kluger, Ph.D. (Hebrew University of Jerusalem); Carl A. Thoresen, Ph.D.; Joyce E. Bono, Ph.D. (University of Florida); Gregory K. Patton, Ph.D.; and Ryan Klinger, Ph.D. (Old Dominion University).

Purpose

In both applied industrial-organizational psychology and academic management research, the measurement of job satisfaction has historically presented a fundamental methodological dilemma: researchers must choose between comprehensive facet-based inventories and streamlined global assessments. Extensive facet inventories, such as the Job Descriptive Index (JDI; Smith, Kendall, & Hulin, 1969) or the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ; Weiss, Dawis, England, & Lofquist, 1967), assess specific, discrete work dimensions such as pay, promotions, supervision, co-workers, and the work itself. However, summated facet measures often fail to capture an employee's overall, gestalt affective state toward their employment. Furthermore, extensive facet scales create substantial survey fatigue, introduce high attrition rates in longitudinal and multi-wave survey designs, and constrain the inclusion of other critical psychological constructs in broad organizational surveys.

The Brief Overall Job Satisfaction Measures I and II were specifically created to resolve these administrative and conceptual limitations. The overarching purpose of both instruments is to provide a brief, psychometrically sound, theoretically rigorous, and easily administrable metric of global job satisfaction. Rather than assuming that global satisfaction is merely the mathematical sum of isolated satisfaction facets, BOJSM-I and BOJSM-II assess the individual's overarching, integrated cognitive and affective evaluation of their job as a whole. This conceptualization reflects the psychological reality that employees intuitively weight different aspects of their employment according to idiosyncratic values, personal needs, and subjective priorities.

In research contexts, the BOJSM scales serve as vital tools for investigating the antecedents, correlates, and outcomes of employee work attitudes. They are extensively applied in structural equation modeling, experience sampling methodology (ESM), daily diary studies, and panel longitudinal investigations where participant burden must be minimized. In clinical, occupational health, and human resource management contexts, the measures enable rapid organizational climate diagnostics, organizational health monitoring, assessment of organizational change interventions, and screening for employee distress, alienation, burnout, and voluntary turnover risk.

Psychological Construct

Job satisfaction is conceptualized in contemporary psychological literature as a multidimensional evaluative judgment that an employee makes regarding their working life, encompassing both affective (emotional) reactions and cognitive (evaluative) appraisals. As detailed by Judge and Klinger (2008), job satisfaction is situated at the intersection of subjective well-being (SWB) and organizational behavior, representing the domain-specific counterpart to general life satisfaction.

The Brief Overall Job Satisfaction Measures operationalize job satisfaction through distinct methodological lenses:

Global Affective vs. Cognitive Evaluation

Traditional industrial-organizational models distinguish between affective job satisfaction—the extent of pleasurable emotional states experienced at work—and cognitive job satisfaction—the rational, objective appraisal of working conditions, remuneration, and developmental opportunities. BOJSM-II explicitly integrates both elements. Statements such as "I find real enjoyment in my work" and "Most days I am enthusiastic about my work" tap into high-activation, positive affective work experiences. Conversely, items such as "I feel fairly well satisfied with my present job" capture a reasoned, cognitive summary appraisal of the employment arrangement.

Temporal and Distributional Work Attitudes (BOJSM-I)

BOJSM-I captures a unique distributional dimension of job satisfaction. While standard psychometric scales force respondents to collapse dynamic, fluctuating experiences into a single static point on an ordinal scale, BOJSM-I acknowledges that employment experiences vary across time. By prompting employees to estimate the precise percentage of time they feel satisfied, dissatisfied, and neutral (summing to 100%), the instrument measures the cognitive availability and temporal stability of positive versus negative work affect. Scoring exclusively the percentage of time satisfied provides a continuous, ratio-level metric of hedonic tone in the workplace.

Mitigation of Acquiescence and Method Artifacts (BOJSM-II)

A critical psychometric consideration in measuring global constructs is acquiescence bias—the tendency for respondents to agree with survey statements irrespective of content. BOJSM-II safeguards against this threat by incorporating balanced framing. Among its five items, three are keyed positively (satisfaction, enthusiasm, enjoyment), while two are keyed negatively ("Each day of work seems like it will never end" and "I consider my job rather unpleasant"). When reverse-scored, these items ensure that elevated composite scores reflect genuine positive psychological attachment rather than response sets or uncritical agreement.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical foundations of the Brief Overall Job Satisfaction Measures rest upon decades of organizational psychology and behavioral economics, synthesizing foundational theories from Locke, Brayfield and Rothe, Hackman and Oldham, and contemporary dispositional paradigms.

Locke's Value-Percept Theory

The philosophical and conceptual backbone of global job satisfaction measurement is heavily anchored in Edwin A. Locke's (1976) Value-Percept Theory. Locke defined job satisfaction as "a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experiences." According to Locke, satisfaction is not an automatic sensory response, but the outcome of a cognitive appraisal process wherein employees compare what they perceive they are receiving from a job against what they value or desire. BOJSM-I and BOJSM-II measure the aggregate output of this cognitive-evaluative process, allowing employees to apply their own internal subjective weighting rather than imposing arbitrary researcher-derived weightings.

Brayfield and Rothe's Unidimensional Global Construct Model

In 1951, Arthur Brayfield and Harold Rothe published their landmark Index of Job Satisfaction, challenging the prevailing notion that morale was purely fragmented or situational. They argued that underlying specific job reactions is a general, overarching attitude toward employment. Using Thurstone and Likert scaling procedures, they constructed an 18-item scale that exhibited remarkable psychometric reliability. Decades later, Judge, Locke, Durham, and Kluger (1998) recognized that the full 18-item index contained redundancy. By extracting the five items demonstrating the highest item-total correlations and cleanest factor loadings, they created BOJSM-II, preserving the core theoretical integrity of Brayfield and Rothe's global attitude construct while drastically streamlining administration.

The Dispositional Approach and Core Self-Evaluations

Judge and colleagues integrated these brief measures into the dispositional model of job satisfaction, culminating in the Core Self-Evaluations (CSE) framework (Judge et al., 1997, 1998). This theoretical framework posits that fundamental, subconscious evaluations that individuals hold about themselves—specifically self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and neuroticism/emotional stability—exert pervasive direct and indirect effects on job satisfaction. The use of brief, psychometrically pure overall satisfaction measures enabled Judge and colleagues to demonstrate that people with positive core self-evaluations perceive their jobs as possessing more intrinsic worth, thereby experiencing elevated overall satisfaction regardless of external organizational fluctuations.

Validity

The construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity of both BOJSM-I and BOJSM-II have been confirmed across hundreds of empirical studies encompassing diverse occupational classifications, cultural settings, and organizational contexts.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity has been evaluated by correlating BOJSM-I and BOJSM-II with extensive, established multi-item satisfaction inventories. Across meta-analytic and empirical investigations (Judge et al., 1998; Judge, Bono, & Locke, 2000), BOJSM-II scores correlate strongly with the full 18-item Brayfield-Rothe scale (r > .90), demonstrating that the brief five-item adaptation captures nearly identical construct variance. Furthermore, BOJSM-II exhibits correlations ranging from .65 to .78 with the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) composite score and correlations between .60 and .75 with the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) short form. Similarly, the three standardized components of BOJSM-I intercorrelate substantially (typically ranging from .55 to .72), and the aggregate BOJSM-I composite correlates strongly with BOJSM-II (r = .70 to .82), confirming that both measures reflect the identical overarching nomological network.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been established in structural equation modeling by comparing job satisfaction against distinct yet related constructs, such as organizational commitment, job involvement, work engagement, and subjective well-being. Judge, Boudreau, and Bretz (1994), in their investigation of executive populations, demonstrated through confirmatory factor analysis that overall job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and job stress formed distinct latent factors without cross-construct contamination. Similarly, Judge et al. (1998) confirmed that global job satisfaction is empirically distinct from general positive affectivity, negative affectivity, and the four sub-traits of core self-evaluations.

Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity

The ultimate test of an organizational measure lies in its predictive capacity. In their landmark qualitative and quantitative meta-analysis of the satisfaction-performance link, Judge, Thoresen, Bono, and Patton (2001) examined 312 samples encompassing 54,417 individuals. They demonstrated that the true population correlation between overall job satisfaction and job performance is ρ = .30. Importantly, Judge et al. found that brief, global satisfaction measures like the Brayfield-Rothe short form (BOJSM-II) exhibited equal or superior predictive validity for task performance compared to lengthy, facet-summed inventories.

Furthermore, BOJSM-I and BOJSM-II reliably predict critical behavioral and organizational outcomes:

• Voluntary Turnover: Meta-analytic estimates show consistent negative correlations with employee turnover intentions (r = -.45 to -.60) and actual voluntary turnover behaviors over 1-to-3-year tracking periods (r = -.22 to -.28).
• Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs): Both measures correlate positively with altruistic and conscientious citizenship behaviors directed toward peers and the organization (r = .25 to .38).
• Counterproductive Work Behaviors (CWBs): Significant inverse relationships are observed with workplace deviance, absenteeism, and intentional withdrawal behaviors (r = -.25 to -.35).
• Subjective and Physical Well-Being: Global job satisfaction assessed via these brief tools predicts lower somatic health complaints, reduced burnout scores (emotional exhaustion and depersonalization), and higher overall life satisfaction.

Reliability

Both BOJSM-I and BOJSM-II have undergone extensive psychometric testing confirming high reliability across varied sample demographics, including executives, healthcare professionals, blue-collar workers, and academic faculty.

Internal Consistency

For the five-item BOJSM-II, Cronbach's alpha coefficients consistently fall within the ideal range of .83 to .91 across published studies:

• Judge, Locke, Durham, and Kluger (1998): α = .88 (Study 1) and α = .89 (Study 2).
• Judge, Bono, and Locke (2000): α = .87 across multiple longitudinal waves.
• Judge, Thoresen, Pucik, and Welbourne (1999): α = .86 in an organizational change sample.

McDonald's omega (ω) values and composite reliability (ρ_c) estimates derived from structural equation modeling similarly exceed .88, confirming that the scale achieves high reliability without introducing excessive item redundancy.

For BOJSM-I, internal consistency is evaluated through composite reliability of the three standardized items. Because the measure utilizes three distinct formats (a dichotomous response, a 5-point Likert scale, and a continuous percentage estimation), standard raw Cronbach's alpha is inappropriate. Standardized item alpha coefficients routinely exceed .80 to .85, demonstrating strong common variance among the three indicators.

Test-Retest Stability

Longitudinal assessments reveal sound test-retest reliability across diverse temporal lags. In longitudinal studies spanning six months, BOJSM-II demonstrates stability coefficients between r = .65 and r = .72. Over multi-year intervals, stability coefficients remain stable around r = .45 to .55, consistent with theoretical expectations that job satisfaction possesses both stable trait-like baseline components (driven by personality and genetics) and dynamic state-like components (responsive to changes in leadership, compensation, and workplace climate).

Factor Analysis

The structural validity and dimensional architecture of both measures have been comprehensively scrutinized using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Confirmatory Factor Structure of BOJSM-II

Confirmatory factor analyses across numerous samples provide overwhelming support for a single, unidimensional latent factor representing global job satisfaction. In CFA models testing the five-item BOJSM-II (e.g., Judge et al., 1998; Judge & Klinger, 2008), the single-factor structure exhibits exceptional goodness-of-fit indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Routinely > .97 (frequently > .99).
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Routinely > .96.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Values typically range between .035 and .055, with 90% confidence intervals well below the .08 threshold for acceptable fit.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Typically < .03.

Standardized factor loadings for the five items are uniformly high and statistically significant (p < .001). Typical standardized factor loadings observed in structural equation modeling are summarized below:

• Item 1 ("I feel fairly well satisfied with my present job"): λ = .78 to .86
• Item 2 ("Most days I am enthusiastic about my work"): λ = .80 to .88
• Item 3 ("Each day of work seems like it will never end" – reversed): λ = .68 to .76
• Item 4 ("I find real enjoyment in my work"): λ = .82 to .89
• Item 5 ("I consider my job rather unpleasant" – reversed): λ = .72 to .79

Although method effects associated with reverse-scored items occasionally produce slight error covariance between Items 3 and 5, the substantive unidimensional factor accounts for over 65% of the total variance across items.

Dimensional Structure of BOJSM-I

Principal components analysis and single-factor CFA on the three standardized items of BOJSM-I demonstrate that a single unrotated factor accounts for approximately 70% to 75% of the total variance, with all three indicators displaying primary factor loadings in excess of .75. This confirms that despite the divergence in item response formats, all three questions tap into a unified underlying psychological latent variable.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Tool Name: Brief Overall Job Satisfaction Measures (BOJSM-I & BOJSM-II)
• Primary Author / Adaptor: Timothy A. Judge, Ph.D., building upon Brayfield & Rothe (1951)
• Construct Assessed: Unidimensional global job satisfaction (affective and cognitive overall evaluation of employment)
• Administration Format: Self-report paper-and-pencil questionnaire or computer-administered online survey
• Administration Time:
  • BOJSM-I: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes
  • BOJSM-II: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes
• Target Population: Working adults across all occupational categories, organizational tiers, and industries
• Structure of BOJSM-I:
  • Item 1: Dichotomous forced-choice format (YES / NO).
  • Item 2: 5-point Likert-type response scale (1 = very dissatisfied, 2 = somewhat dissatisfied, 3 = neutral, 4 = somewhat satisfied, 5 = very satisfied).
  • Item 3: Constant-sum percentage allocation (satisfied, dissatisfied, and neutral, summing to 100%). Only the percent of time satisfied is retained for scoring.
  • Scoring Procedure for BOJSM-I: Because the three questions utilize completely different response metrics, raw scores cannot be directly added. Each item must first be standardized into a standard score (z-score) using sample or normative means and standard deviations: z = (X – M) / SD. The three standardized scores are then averaged or summed to generate the overall job satisfaction index.
• Structure of BOJSM-II:
  • Total Items: 5 items (adapted from the Brayfield-Rothe 18-item index).
  • Response Scale: 7-point Likert agreement scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Slightly Disagree, 4 = Neither Agree Nor Disagree, 5 = Slightly Agree, 6 = Agree, 7 = Strongly Agree).
  • Reverse Scoring: Items 3 and 5 are reverse-scored prior to aggregation:
    
    Recoded Score = 8 - Original Score
    
    (e.g., 7 becomes 1, 6 becomes 2, 5 becomes 3, 4 remains 4, 3 becomes 5, 2 becomes 6, 1 becomes 7).
  • Scoring Procedure for BOJSM-II: Calculate the mean or sum of all 5 items (after reverse-scoring Items 3 and 5). Total summated scores range from 5 to 35, while composite mean scores range from 1.0 to 7.0, with higher values reflecting greater overall job satisfaction.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Test Years:
  • Original foundational 18-item scale: 1951 (Arthur H. Brayfield & Harold F. Rothe).
  • Adaptation, operationalization, and psychometric validation of the brief forms: 1994, 1998, 2001, 2008 (Timothy A. Judge and colleagues).
• Accessibility and Research Permissions: The Brief Overall Job Satisfaction Measures (BOJSM-I and BOJSM-II) are classified as open-access, public-domain psychometric instruments intended for non-commercial academic, scientific, and educational research purposes.
• Fee: Free of charge ($0.00) for scholarly, educational, and organizational research use.
• Commercial and Consulting Usage: Commercial entities or consulting practitioners utilizing the scale within proprietary assessment software or fee-for-service consulting programs should adhere to standard professional attribution standards, citing the foundational publications by Brayfield and Rothe (1951) and Judge et al. (1998, 2001). No formal licensing contract or royalty fee is required by the academic authors.

References

• Brayfield, A. H., & Rothe, H. F. (1951). An index of job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 35(5), 307–311. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0055617
• Judge, T. A., Boudreau, J. W., & Bretz, R. D. (1994). Job and life attitudes of male executives. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(5), 767–782. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.79.5.767
• Judge, T. A., Locke, E. A., & Durham, C. C. (1997). The dispositional causes of job satisfaction: A core evaluations approach. Research in Organizational Behavior, 19, 151–188.
• Judge, T. A., Locke, E. A., Durham, C. C., & Kluger, A. N. (1998). Dispositional effects on job and life satisfaction: The role of core evaluations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(1), 17–34. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.83.1.17
• Judge, T. A., Thoresen, C. A., Pucik, V., & Welbourne, T. M. (1999). Managerial coping with organizational change: A dispositional perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(1), 107–122. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.84.1.107
• Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., & Locke, E. A. (2000). Personality and job satisfaction: The mediating role of job characteristics. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(2), 237–249. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.85.2.237
• Judge, T. A., Thoresen, C. A., Bono, J. E., & Patton, G. K. (2001). The job satisfaction–job performance relationship: A qualitative and quantitative review. Psychological Bulletin, 127(3), 376–407. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.127.3.376
• Judge, T. A., & Klinger, R. (2008). Job satisfaction: Subjective well-being at work. In M. Eid & R. J. Larsen (Eds.), The science of subjective well-being (pp. 393–413). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
• 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). Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.
• Smith, P. C., Kendall, L. M., & Hulin, C. L. (1969). The measurement of satisfaction in work and retirement. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally.
• Weiss, D. J., Dawis, R. V., England, G. W., & Lofquist, L. H. (1967). Manual for the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire. Minnesota Studies in Vocational Rehabilitation, No. XXII. Minneapolis, MN: Industrial Relations Center, University of Minnesota.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)