Job Satisfaction Index

Abstract

The Job Satisfaction Index (JSI), developed by Arthur H. Brayfield and Harold F. Rothe in 1951, is one of the foundational, most widely utilized self-report instruments designed to assess overall, global job satisfaction. In contrast to facet-based instruments that dissect employment into discreet components such as compensation, promotion opportunities, supervision, and coworkers, the JSI was deliberately constructed to capture an employee’s omnibus affective and evaluative orientation toward their employment. The scale comprises 18 self-administered items rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly Agree) to 5 (Strongly Disagree), incorporating a balanced mix of 9 positively worded and 9 negatively worded statements to mitigate acquiescence response bias.

Brayfield and Rothe developed the scale by combining the rigorous item-selection methodology of a Thurstone scale with the practical scoring ease of a Likert-type design. In the initial psychometric validation across a primary sample of 231 female clerical office workers, the instrument demonstrated an odd-even split-half reliability coefficient of .77, which corrected to .87 using the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula. Scores span from 18 to 90, with higher composite values denoting elevated levels of job satisfaction. Decades of subsequent psychometric investigations have affirmed the scale’s unidimensional structure, robust internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha typically ranging between .85 and .91), and profound criterion-related validity. This comprehensive overview examines the theoretical foundation, psychometric properties, structural factor models, scoring architecture, and operational utility of the Job Satisfaction Index across contemporary organizational and occupational research.

Keywords

Job Satisfaction Index, JSI, Brayfield and Rothe, global job satisfaction, organizational psychology, employee attitudes, affective well-being, psychometrics, Thurstone scaling, job attitude measurement

Authors

The Job Satisfaction Index was originated and validated by:

• Arthur H. Brayfield, Ph.D.: Renowned industrial psychologist, scholar, and former president of the American Psychological Association (APA Division 14, now the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology). At the time of the instrument’s publication, Dr. Brayfield served on the faculty at the University of Minnesota and Kansas State College, authoring fundamental texts in vocational counseling and personnel selection.
• Harold F. Rothe, Ph.D.: Industrial and organizational psychologist affiliated with the University of Minnesota and later a prominent corporate psychologist at Fairbanks, Morse & Company. Dr. Rothe made significant contributions to the literature on employee incentive systems, work output distribution, and psychological measurement in industrial settings.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Job Satisfaction Index is to measure an individual’s general, undifferentiated affective evaluation of their current employment situation. During the mid-20th century, prevailing organizational assessments frequently suffered from two distinct psychometric limitations: they either relied on overly simplistic single-item indicators of global satisfaction (which lacked psychometric reliability and granular sensitivity) or employed lengthy, cumbersome facet-specific surveys that failed to capture an integrated emotional appraisal of work life.

Brayfield and Rothe (1951) sought to fill this methodological void by designing an instrument that satisfied four fundamental criteria: (1) sensitivity to varying degrees of job satisfaction, (2) broad applicability across diverse occupational strata rather than narrow job classifications, (3) operational brevity enabling straightforward group administration within industrial environments, and (4) psychometric reliability and construct validity comparable to rigorously constructed attitude scales. Rather than diagnosing satisfaction with specific environmental attributes (such as physical plant conditions, parking privileges, or pension schemes), the JSI was engineered to capture the emotional gestalt of whether an employee finds their work fulfilling, engaging, tedious, or distressing.

In applied organizational diagnostics, human resources professionals utilize the JSI to establish baseline organizational climate benchmarks, audit workforce morale following corporate restructuring, and evaluate the behavioral impact of organizational interventions. In academic research, the JSI serves as an indispensable criterion or mediating variable in causal models examining employee turnover intentions, occupational burnout, absenteeism, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), and subjective well-being.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the JSI is global job satisfaction, defined as an individual’s general affective, cognitive, and evaluative reaction to their total job experience. Historically, organizational psychology has oscillated between conceptualizing job satisfaction as a composite of discrete domain facets (e.g., pay, supervision, nature of work, promotional prospects) versus an overarching, unitary dispositional state. The JSI operationalizes job satisfaction through the unitary, holistic framework.

Within this construct, three core psychological components are intrinsically manifested:

• Affective Resonance and Hedonic Tone: Items evaluate the hedonic pleasure or displeasure derived directly from performing work duties. Statements such as “I find real enjoyment in my work” and “I definitely dislike my work” probe the baseline emotional valence experienced by the worker during the operational execution of their daily tasks.
• Cognitive Engagement versus Boredom: Cognitive appraisal forms an essential substrate of job satisfaction. The scale evaluates whether the worker perceives their duties as stimulating or cognitively numbing, as exemplified by items such as “My job is usually interesting enough to keep me from getting bored” and “I am often bored with my job.” High levels of perceived boredom are posited as direct indicators of maladaptive occupational adjustment.
• Social and Temporal Comparative Evaluation: Workers continually anchor their occupational satisfaction relative to internalized reference groups and temporal prospects. The JSI captures these relative judgments through comparative benchmarks (e.g., “I like my job better than the average worker does”, “It seems that my friends are more interested in their jobs”) and temporal horizons (e.g., “Each day of work seems like it will never end”).

Importantly, the construct captured by Brayfield and Rothe emphasizes subjective occupational experience rather than objective job quality. An employee working in an objectively austere or demanding environment may experience elevated satisfaction if the intrinsic meaning of the labor aligns with their personal values, a dynamic accurately detected by the JSI’s broad evaluative orientation.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture underpinning the Job Satisfaction Index is deeply rooted in early 20th-century psychometric attitude theory and the burgeoning Human Relations Movement in industrial psychology. Following the seminal Hawthorne Studies conducted by Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger, the psychological climate of the workplace was recognized as a primary determinant of worker efficiency, health, and labor stability.

Brayfield and Rothe directly operationalized the theoretical premises articulated by Robert Hoppock (1935), who published the first comprehensive monograph on job satisfaction. Hoppock postulated that job satisfaction represents an integrated combination of psychological, physiological, and environmental circumstances that cause an individual truthfully to say: “I am satisfied with my job.” Brayfield and Rothe conceptualized job satisfaction as an attitude—an organized predisposition to respond evaluatively toward one’s vocational situation.

Methodologically, the construction of the JSI represents an innovative synthesis of two foundational attitude-measurement theories:

• The Thurstone Equal-Appearing Intervals Method: L. L. Thurstone’s approach involves collecting a vast pool of opinion statements, having expert judges sort them along a multi-point psychological continuum ranging from extreme favorableness to extreme unfavorableness, and computing scale values and measures of ambiguity (interquartile range, Q). Brayfield and Rothe used this exact procedure to screen out ambiguous and non-discriminating items.
• The Likert Summated Rating Technique: While Thurstone scales conventionally require respondents to endorse only items with which they agree (yielding a median scale score), Rensis Likert’s summated rating technique allows respondents to express varying degrees of agreement across every item. Brayfield and Rothe superimposed Likert’s 5-point response format onto the rigorously filtered Thurstone items, maximizing measurement variance, statistical tractability, and reliability without demanding complex scale-value calculations during field scoring.

In later decades, the theoretical construct operationalized by the JSI became further elucidated through Edwin A. Locke’s (1976) Value-Percept Theory, which defines job satisfaction as a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences as fulfilling or facilitating the attainment of one’s personal work values. Furthermore, contemporary models such as the Affective Events Theory (AET) (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) frame JSI responses as an aggregated, cumulative reflection of stable cognitive judgments filtered through ongoing daily workplace affect.

Validity

Brayfield and Rothe (1951) and subsequent independent researchers accumulated multi-faceted psychometric evidence supporting the content, construct, criterion-related, and convergent validity of the Job Satisfaction Index.

Content and Face Validity

The content foundation began with the generation of approximately 1,000 preliminary statements expressing diverse attitudes toward employment. These items were developed by 77 men enrolled in an Army Specialized Training Program in personnel psychology at the University of Minnesota. Following extensive editorial consolidation to remove redundancy and vague phrasing, a refined pool of 246 items was subjected to rigorous sorting criteria established by Thurstone. The 77 adult judges sorted the items into 11 categories along an affective continuum. Items exhibiting wide interquartile spreads (indicating interpretive ambiguity) were discarded. The remaining items possessed unequivocal face validity, consensus agreement regarding affective direction, and clear evaluative anchors.

Criterion-Related and Known-Groups Validity

Brayfield and Rothe established criterion-related validity through a known-groups design. The final 18-item index was administered to 91 adult night school students (49 men, 42 women) attending university courses in personnel psychology. These participants were partitioned into two distinct occupational cohorts: those employed directly in human resources/personnel occupations ($n = 40$) and those employed in non-personnel occupations ($n = 51$). The underlying theoretical premise was that adult night students who had successfully secured employment in their chosen field of study (personnel management) would exhibit statistically higher vocational satisfaction than students employed in disparate occupations unrelated to their educational interests. A comparison of group means substantiated this hypothesis at a statistically significant level ($p < .05$), providing direct empirical support for known-groups criterion validity.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

Subsequent psychometric evaluations across five decades have consistently demonstrated high convergent correlations between the JSI and other established measures of job satisfaction. For example, correlations between the JSI and the Hoppock Job Satisfaction Blank routinely exceed $r = .70$. In comparative studies examining the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) “Work on Present Job” subscale and the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) General Satisfaction score, the JSI exhibits convergent coefficients ranging between $.65$ and $.82$, confirming construct convergence. Discriminant validity has been demonstrated in structural equation modeling (SEM) investigations showing that the JSI remains factorially distinct from general life satisfaction, negative affectivity, and job strain (Brooke, Russell, & Price, 1988).

Reliability

The Job Satisfaction Index exhibits exceptionally robust reliability parameters across both original and contemporary validation samples.

Split-Half and Internal Consistency

In the original validation study (Brayfield & Rothe, 1951), the scale was administered to a primary occupational sample consisting of 231 female clerical office workers employed by a large multi-state organization. The empirical findings demonstrated:

• Score Distribution: Observed scores spanned from 35 to 87 across the theoretical range of 18 to 90.
• Central Tendency: The sample mean was $63.8$ with a standard deviation ($SD$) of $9.4$.
• Split-Half Reliability: The product-moment correlation coefficient between odd and even items was computed at $r = .77$.
• Spearman-Brown Correction: When adjusted via the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula to estimate the reliability of the full 18-item instrument, the reliability coefficient reached $r_{sb} = .87$.

Subsequent research utilizing modern estimates of internal consistency has corroborated these early findings. Contemporary samples across manufacturing, healthcare, education, and professional services yield Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently situated between $.85$ and $.92$. Shortened adaptations, such as the widely cited 5-item and 6-item subsets utilized by Judge, Bono, and Locke (2000), preserve internal consistency coefficients typically exceeding $.80$.

Test-Retest Stability

Temporal stability evaluations across intervals ranging from two weeks to one calendar year have substantiated that the JSI reliably captures a durable dispositional-evaluative stance toward work rather than transient state-dependent moods. Test-retest correlation coefficients have been documented between $r = .70$ and $r = .82$ over short intervals (2–6 weeks) and approximately $.60$ to $.68$ over extended longitudinal windows (1–2 years), reflecting both attitude stability and legitimate reactivity to major organizational events.

Factor Analysis

Although Brayfield and Rothe intentionally developed the Job Satisfaction Index as a unidimensional instrument reflecting general job satisfaction, subsequent exploratory factor analyses (EFA) and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) have rigorously scrutinized its latent dimensionality.

Unidimensional Factor Structure

The predominant structural finding in the literature supports an overarching single-factor model representing global job satisfaction. In an influential structural equation modeling study, Brooke, Russell, and Price (1988) tested the discriminant validity and latent structure of job satisfaction (measured via the JSI), organizational commitment, and job involvement. CFA findings revealed that the JSI items loaded strongly onto a distinct, solitary job satisfaction factor, with standard standardized factor loadings predominantly ranging from $.48$ to $.82$. Model fit indices supported the tenability of this unidimensional solution ($CFI > .90$, $TLI > .90$, $RMSEA < .06$).

Methodological Artifact: The Two-Factor Illusion

Certain exploratory factor analyses have extracted two distinct factors when evaluating the 18 items. However, psychometricians have established that this two-factor solution is a well-documented statistical artifact stemming from item-wording polarity rather than substantively distinct theoretical constructs:

• Factor 1: Composed entirely of the 9 positively phrased items (e.g., Items 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 17).
• Factor 2: Composed entirely of the 9 negatively phrased items (e.g., Items 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18).

When confirmatory factor models incorporate a correlated trait-correlated method (CTCM) or bifactor model accounting for reverse-wording method variance, the data decisively conform to a single substantive latent trait of job satisfaction. Consequently, extracting separate subscales based on wording orientation is theoretically invalid, and psychometric consensus firmly mandates aggregating all items into a single composite score.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Job Satisfaction Index (JSI)
• Alternative Names: Brayfield-Rothe Job Satisfaction Index, Brayfield-Rothe Scale
• Authors: Arthur H. Brayfield and Harold F. Rothe (1951)
• Construct Measured: Overall / Global Job Satisfaction
• Instrument Type: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or digital self-report questionnaire
• Item Count: 18 items
• Item Polarity: Balanced design (9 positively worded items, 9 negatively worded items)
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert scale:
  • Strongly Agree = 1
  • Agree = 2
  • Undecided = 3
  • Disagree = 4
  • Strongly Disagree = 5
• Scoring and Transformation Rules:
  • The instrument is scored such that higher aggregate values denote higher levels of job satisfaction.
  • To achieve this, the 9 positively worded items (Items 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, and 17) must be reverse-scored prior to summation: $1 \rightarrow 5$, $2 \rightarrow 4$, $3 \rightarrow 3$, $4 \rightarrow 2$, $5 \rightarrow 1$.
  • The 9 negatively worded items (Items 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, and 18) retain their original numerical assignment: $1 = 1$, $2 = 2$, $3 = 3$, $4 = 4$, $5 = 5$.
• Score Range: Minimum possible score = 18; Maximum possible score = 90.
• Score Interpretation:
  • 18 – 42: Substantial Job Dissatisfaction. Indicates acute vocational distress, persistent boredom, active occupational discontent, or an elevated probability of voluntary turnover.
  • 43 – 65: Moderate / Ambivalent Satisfaction. Denotes an average, neutral, or mixed appraisal of current employment; typical of employees who view their work instrumentally.
  • 66 – 90: High Job Satisfaction. Signifies pronounced work engagement, strong occupational identification, high intrinsic enjoyment, and positive workplace morale.
• Administration Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes.
• Target Population: Adult working populations across diverse occupational sectors, industries, and educational backgrounds.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Job Satisfaction Index was originally published in 1951 in the Journal of Applied Psychology (Volume 35, Issue 5, pages 307–311), published by the American Psychological Association (APA). The full text of the instrument and its scoring criteria were explicitly placed in the public domain for academic, scientific, and scholarly investigation upon original publication.

Researchers and non-commercial organizational practitioners may utilize, reproduce, and administer the 18-item scale without payment of licensing royalties or preliminary formal permission, provided that standard scholarly attribution and formal citation to Brayfield and Rothe (1951) are maintained. For commercial software integration, digital proprietary distribution, or commercial survey platforms, users should verify compliance with the copyright policies of the American Psychological Association regarding historical journal content.

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
• Brooke, P. P., Russell, D. W., & Price, J. L. (1988). Discriminant validation of measures of job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 73(2), 139–145. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.73.2.139
• Camp, W. G. (1987). Student misbehavior and job satisfaction of vocational agriculture teachers: A path analysis. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 279 791.
• Hoppock, R. (1935). Job satisfaction. Harper & Brothers.
• Jones, J. J. (1983). The relationship between selected predictor variables and perceived job satisfaction of Oklahoma public school superintendents (Doctoral dissertation). Oklahoma State University.
• 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
• 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). Rand McNally.
• Tharrington, D. E. (1992). Perceived principal leadership behavior and reported teacher job satisfaction (Doctoral dissertation). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• Weiss, H. M., & Cropanzano, R. (1996). Affective events theory: A theoretical discussion of the structure, causes and consequences of affective experiences at work. Research in Organizational Behavior, 18, 1–74.

Items of the Scale