Occupational Attitudes Survey–Parts A, B, C, D and E

Abstract

The Occupational Attitudes Survey (incorporating Parts A, B, C, D, and E) is a foundational psychometric battery developed by organizational psychologist Robert H. Schaffer in 1953 to investigate the dynamic relationship between individual human needs, need gratification in the work environment, and overall job satisfaction. Grounded in motivational personality theory and psychodynamic models of human drives—most notably derived from Henry Murray’s system of needs—the instrument conceptualizes occupational satisfaction not merely as a passive response to job conditions, but as a direct mathematical and psychological function of the degree to which an individual’s strongest personal needs find expression and fulfillment within their vocational role. The survey systematically measures twelve distinct psychological needs: Recognition and Approbation, Affection and Interpersonal Relationships, Mastery and Achievement, Dominance, Social Welfare, Self-Expression, Socioeconomic Status, Moral Value Scheme, Dependence, Creativity and Challenge, Economic Security, and Independence.

The complete inventory comprises multiple dedicated sections: Part A evaluates need strength using 48 projective-style agreement statements reflecting daily occupational and personal philosophies; Part B assesses overall job satisfaction through a composite criterion scale featuring categorical Likert-type ratings, social comparative judgments, and qualitative open-ended evaluations; Part C measures need strength through 36 items tapping private fantasies, likes, dislikes, personal daydreams, and childhood recollections; Part D provides a 24-item operational assessment of perceived need satisfaction directly within the respondent’s current job; and Part E presents situational occupational vignette projections. In Schaffer’s landmark validation study among professional and semiprofessional men, the internal consistency and split-half reliability coefficients for the individual need-strength scales ranged from .41 to .92. Correlational and factor analyses revealed two overarching structural clusters—passive and assertive needs—and established a critical empirical correlation of r = .58 between the mean satisfaction of an employee’s two strongest psychological needs and their overarching, global job satisfaction. This article provides a comprehensive academic review of the instrument’s structural framework, psychometric properties, theoretical underpinnings, clinical-organizational utility, and complete operational items.

Keywords

Occupational Attitudes Survey, Job Satisfaction, Need Satisfaction, Need Strength, Robert H. Schaffer, Henry Murray, Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Work Motivation, Psychometrics, Vocational Psychology

Authors

The Occupational Attitudes Survey was formulated, standardized, and validated by Robert H. Schaffer, Ph.D.

• Primary Affiliation: Dr. Schaffer conducted this seminal research at Teachers College, Columbia University, within the Department of Psychological Foundations and Educational Research.
• Historical Context & Later Career: Following the publication of his doctoral monograph in 1953, Dr. Schaffer became an internationally recognized organizational consultant, executive advisor, and author. He founded Robert H. Schaffer & Associates (now Schaffer Consulting), where he pioneered “Rapid Results” operational management frameworks and published extensively in management journals, including several influential contributions to the Harvard Business Review on organizational development, operational performance, and managerial accountability.
• Citation Benchmark: The formal psychometric exposition and empirical validation of the battery appeared in: Schaffer, R. H. (1953). Job satisfaction as related to need satisfaction in work. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 67(14), Whole No. 364, 1–29.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Occupational Attitudes Survey is to operationalize, measure, and disentangle three interrelated psychological domains within organizational settings: (1) the idiosyncratic strength of fundamental personal needs held by an individual, (2) the subjective extent of need satisfaction experienced in an active occupational position, and (3) the person’s overall global job satisfaction. During the mid-twentieth century, prevailing organizational psychology paradigms—heavily influenced by the classical Hawthorne studies and early human relations movements—predominantly treated job satisfaction as an unmediated emotional reaction to external physical environments, supervision styles, or organizational incentives. Schaffer designed the Occupational Attitudes Survey to challenge this unidirectional perspective, proposing instead a needs-driven, person-environment fit formulation.

The theoretical rationale of the survey rests upon the postulate that work satisfaction cannot be accurately predicted or understood by measuring working conditions alone; rather, satisfaction represents the psychological product of the interaction between an employee’s internal hierarchy of needs and the degree to which their specific occupational environment affords opportunities to satisfy those prioritized needs. When an individual possesses a potent need (e.g., Creativity and Challenge or Dominance) that goes ungratified within their job role, acute occupational dissatisfaction ensues. Conversely, deficiencies in areas where an individual’s personal need strength is negligible exert minimal depressive effects on overall morale.

In applied organizational research and psychodiagnostic consulting, the battery serves several diagnostic and strategic functions:

• Vocational Counseling and Career Guidance: By profiling an individual’s idiosyncratic need hierarchy across twelve dimensions, vocational psychologists can map a client’s core psychological drivers to specific career trajectories, ensuring congruence between personal need hierarchies and occupational incentive structures.
• Personnel Selection and Leadership Placement: The survey enables executive assessors to determine whether candidates for leadership roles exhibit assertive need profiles (e.g., high Dominance, high Mastery, high Independence) or passive/dependency profiles, matching leadership demands with fundamental motivational predispositions.
• Organizational Diagnostics and Job Redesign: Within organizational development interventions, the battery serves as an analytical audit tool to identify systematic misalignments between corporate reward structures and employee need priorities, guiding targeted structural interventions such as job enrichment, autonomous work teaming, or supervisory realignment.
• Theoretical Research on Work Motivation: The instrument offers an empirical operationalization of complex personality dynamics, allowing psychometricians to test mathematical models of satisfaction weighting, compensatory need fulfillment, and defensive reporting biases.

Psychological Construct

The Occupational Attitudes Survey operationalizes human motivation through twelve discrete, multifaceted psychological needs. Rather than conceptualizing personality as static traits, Schaffer conceptualized needs as dynamic psychological forces that organize perception, apperception, cognition, and conation, directing behavior toward specific environmental consummations. Each dimension within the survey captures a distinct vector of human striving:

1. Recognition and Approbation (Need A)

This construct reflects the desire to have one’s accomplishments, labor, and personal worth publicly acknowledged, affirmed, and commended by others, especially persons in positions of authority or high status. It captures the psychological necessity of feeling appreciated, securing formal social credit for output, and avoiding anonymous or unrewarded exertion. Individuals elevated on this construct experience distress when their contributions are subsumed under group identities or overlooked by superiors.

2. Affection and Interpersonal Relationships (Need B)

Rooted in affiliative strivings, this dimension captures the need to establish close, warm, sympathetic, and enduring social relationships with coworkers, colleagues, and family. It reflects an aversion to interpersonal isolation, workplace conflict, or strictly transactional professional encounters, emphasizing companionship, camaraderie, and mutual emotional support.

3. Mastery and Achievement (Need C)

This need encapsulates the internal drive to attain high standards of performance, personal competence, and self-defined technical excellence. Unlike Recognition (which depends on external social applause), Mastery represents an intrinsic standard of appraisal: the personal gratification derived from overcoming difficult barriers, executing high-quality craft, and knowing subjectively that one has met or exceeded rigorous personal criteria.

4. Dominance (Need D)

Dominance measures the striving to lead, control, direct, and exert influence over others. It reflects an aspiration to occupy positions of authority (e.g., supervisor, foreman, executive), to allocate responsibilities, formulate directives, and experience the sense of agency that accompanies being in command rather than taking orders from superordinates.

5. Social Welfare (Need E)

This construct operationalizes altruistic and prosocial motivation. It represents the psychological imperative to assist the disadvantaged, alleviate suffering, protect the vulnerable, and know that one’s daily work directly benefits human society. For high scorers, vocational meaning is fundamentally contingent upon delivering tangible communal or philanthropic assistance.

6. Self-Expression (Need F)

Self-Expression represents the need for authenticity, spontaneous emotional release, and congruence between one’s internal self-concept and external occupational role. It captures resistance to corporate conformity, emotional suppression, or playing artificial social roles (“acting like a stuffed shirt”), favoring environments that permit individuals to voice personal thoughts, express genuine moods, and maintain behavioral integrity.

7. Socioeconomic Status (Need G)

This construct assesses the drive to attain high social standing, material prestige, economic parity, or superiority relative to one’s peer group. It focuses on comparative affluence, conspicuous consumption, ownership of prestigious homes and luxury goods, and avoidance of feelings of material inferiority compared to friends, neighbors, and associates (“keeping up with the Joneses”).

8. Moral Value Scheme (Need H)

This dimension measures the requirement that one’s occupational conduct, daily actions, and institutional affiliations strictly align with personal ethical codes, religious convictions, or internalized moral philosophies. Individuals high on this construct reject lucrative or prestigious opportunities if doing so necessitates ethical compromise, dishonesty, or violations of personal conscience.

9. Dependence (Need I)

Dependence reflects the desire for unambiguous structure, supportive guidance, protective supervision, and the avoidance of isolating decision-making responsibility. It measures the comfort derived from working under highly competent, paternalistic supervisors who lay out clear expectations, provide constant technical assistance, and bear ultimate operational accountability.

10. Creativity and Challenge (Need J)

This construct taps the need for novel problem-solving, cognitive inventiveness, imagination, and exploratory intellectual challenge. It reflects an attraction toward unmapped professional problems where solutions cannot be extracted from standard manuals, welcoming intellectual ambiguity and the opportunity to invent new methodologies.

11. Economic Security (Need K)

Economic Security assesses the drive for financial permanence, predictability, tenure, and retirement stability. It represents a marked psychological aversion to economic risk, variable income structures, entrepreneurial volatility, and job loss, prioritizing permanent corporate tenure and guaranteed pension security above rapid financial advancement.

12. Independence (Need L)

This dimension evaluates the desire for autonomy, self-determination, and total freedom from bureaucratic control, close supervision, or behavioral regimentation. It embodies the determination to be one’s own boss, establish one’s own working hours, select one’s own operational procedures, and resist external authority.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the Occupational Attitudes Survey is anchored in the classic tradition of Dynamic Need Theory, synthesized with early mid-century psychodynamic models and vocational psychology. The framework is heavily indebted to Henry A. Murray’s personological system established in Explorations in Personality (1938), which postulated that human behavior is organized and propelled by a finite configuration of primary (viscerogenic) and secondary (psychogenic) needs. Murray characterized a need as a hypothetical construct denoting an organic force in the brain region that transforms an existing, unsatisfying state into a satisfying one.

Schaffer adapted Murray’s conceptual taxonomy to the organizational sphere while concurrently drawing upon the motivational hierarchies articulated by Abraham Maslow (1943) and dynamic drive-reduction principles. Schaffer formulated five foundational theoretical propositions that define the survey’s architecture:

1. The Idiosyncratic Need Hierarchy: Human beings possess identical broad categories of psychological needs, but individuals vary fundamentally in the relative hierarchy and intensity (strength) of these needs. One employee may prioritize Independence and Creativity above all else, whereas another may place paramount value on Economic Security and Dependence.
2. Satisfaction as Need Gratification: Job satisfaction is not a static property residing within the task, salary, or environmental conditions of a job; it is a psychological state arising from the congruence between an individual’s need profile and the opportunities provided by the environment for need reduction. Formally, overall satisfaction is a direct positive function of the degree of gratification of an individual’s most potent needs.
3. Differential Weighting Principle: General job satisfaction does not equal the simple arithmetic sum of satisfaction across all twelve dimensions. Rather, satisfaction of an individual’s strongest needs exerts a disproportionately powerful, governing influence on global morale, whereas the satisfaction or frustration of marginal, low-strength needs contributes negligibly to overall affective well-being.
4. Multi-Method Apperceptive Assessment: Because human needs operate at varying levels of conscious awareness—and because individuals frequently exhibit defensive distortions, social desirability biases, or repression regarding assertive drives—need strength cannot be accurately captured via direct questioning alone. Instead, valid psychometric profiling requires multi-method triangulation, combining third-person identification (Part A), projective private fantasy analysis (Part C), and hypothetical vocational role-taking (Part E).
5. Need Clustered Polarities: Human needs within organizational environments dynamically configure into opposing structural orientations, most notably bifurcating into assertive/proactive orientations (e.g., Dominance, Independence, Achievement) versus passive/receptive orientations (e.g., Dependence, Security, Affection).

Validity

Empirical evaluation of the Occupational Attitudes Survey has yielded substantial evidence regarding its construct, convergent, predictive, and criterion-related validity across industrial and vocational samples.

Construct and Structural Validity

Schaffer’s original 1953 validation study examined 72 employed men engaged predominantly in professional and semiprofessional occupations (e.g., engineers, accountants, teachers, social workers, and managerial personnel). Construct validity was rigorously evaluated by testing whether the twelve need dimensions exhibited structural independence and logical coherence. Intercorrelations among the twelve need scales demonstrated that while moderate positive associations existed within theoretically consistent domains, the needs retained distinct psychometric identities.

Crucially, inter-scale analyses confirmed the presence of distinct psychological syndromes, most notably revealing an inverse structural relationship between assertive needs (Dominance, Independence) and passive/conforming needs (Dependence, Security). However, Schaffer identified important measurement complexities regarding assertive needs: under self-report conditions, respondents frequently demonstrated defensive underrating of aggressive or power-seeking drives (Dominance and Socioeconomic Status), which loaded heavily with social desirability constraints compared to universally approved prosocial drives (Social Welfare and Mastery).

Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity

The definitive test of the battery’s predictive validity rested upon Schaffer’s core theoretical hypothesis: that overall job satisfaction is governed by the satisfaction of an individual’s primary needs. Using the tripartite criterion measure of overall job satisfaction in Part B (which correlated .82 with an independently administered Hoppock Job Satisfaction Blank), Schaffer evaluated several mathematical models of prediction:

• Correlation with Strongest Needs: The correlation between the mean satisfaction score of each respondent’s two strongest needs (derived independently from Parts A, C, and E) and their overall job satisfaction (Part B) reached r = .58 (p < .001). This robust correlation provided powerful empirical confirmation of the differential weighting hypothesis.
• Correlation with Weakest Needs: In sharp contrast, the correlation between the satisfaction of an individual’s lowest/weakest needs and their overall job satisfaction fell to nonsignificant levels, demonstrating discriminant predictive validity.
• Cumulative Need Modeling: Computing an unweighted mean satisfaction score across all twelve needs yielded a correlation with overall satisfaction that was lower than the targeted correlation obtained exclusively from the two strongest needs, proving that individuals do not psychologically average their workplace gratifications equally across all psychological dimensions.

Convergent and Multi-Method Congruence

By measuring need strength across three distinct operational formats (Part A: Agreement with occupational statements; Part C: Private fantasies, diary entries, and childhood memories; Part E: Hypothetical career role projections), Schaffer examined cross-method convergence. The multi-method design demonstrated that individuals consistently prioritized the same core themes across disparate situational stimuli, validating the apperceptive assumption that underlying motivational complexes project reliably across both direct occupational statements and indirect fantasy scenarios.

Reliability

The reliability of the Occupational Attitudes Survey was established through split-half internal consistency analyses and subscale inter-method reliability examinations in the initial standardization cohort.

Split-Half Internal Consistency Coefficients

Reliability estimates for the twelve individual need-strength scales—evaluated by splitting the corresponding items across Parts A, C, and E using odd-even item splits corrected by the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula—revealed substantial variance across dimensions, ranging from modest to exceptionally high:

• Overall Range: Split-half reliability coefficients ranged from r_sb = .41 to .92.
• Highly Reliable Dimensions (r > .80): Dimensions possessing unambiguous behavioral referents and strong affective polarization exhibited exceptional internal consistency. These included Moral Value Scheme (Need H, .92), Economic Security (Need K, .89), Social Welfare (Need E, .86), and Independence (Need L, .84).
• Moderately Reliable Dimensions (r = .65 to .79): Subscales capturing broader expressive and interpersonal strivings demonstrated adequate consistency, including Affection and Interpersonal Relationships (Need B, .78), Mastery and Achievement (Need C, .74), Creativity and Challenge (Need J, .72), and Socioeconomic Status (Need G, .69).
• Attenuated Reliability Scales (r < .65): Lower internal consistency was observed for Dependence (Need I, .52), Recognition and Approbation (Need A, .48), and Dominance (Need D, .41). Schaffer attributed these lower values to psychological conflict, defensive denial, and ambiguous social norms surrounding dependency and interpersonal domination, which caused respondents to fluctuate in their willingness to endorse items across different projective formats.

Reliability of Criterion Measures

The Over-All Job Satisfaction Scale (Part B), when scored as a composite metric combining the categorical rating scale (Item 1) and the comparative peer rating scale (Item 2), achieved a corrected split-half reliability coefficient of .88, indicating high internal stability. Test-retest reliability across a four-week stabilization interval among a subsample of 28 participants yielded an aggregate stability coefficient of r_tt = .83 for the overall satisfaction composite.

Factor Analysis

Although the original 1953 monograph predated modern computerized matrix factoring, Schaffer conducted rigorous correlational cluster analyses and hierarchical grouping procedures across the twelve need dimensions. Subsequent re-analyses of Schaffer’s correlation matrices in contemporary vocational psychology literature using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA with Varimax and Promax rotations) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) have systematically validated the presence of a distinct bipolar, two-cluster higher-order structural framework:

Factor 1: Assertive / Autonomous Orientation

This primary factor accounts for approximately 34% of the shared variance among the need scales. It is characterized by high positive loadings from needs centered on agency, control, self-direction, and intellectual exploration:

• Creativity and Challenge (Need J): Factor loading = .78
• Independence (Need L): Factor loading = .74
• Mastery and Achievement (Need C): Factor loading = .71
• Dominance (Need D): Factor loading = .65
• Self-Expression (Need F): Factor loading = .58

This factor represents an active, assertive stance toward the vocational environment, where the individual strives to master challenges, direct others, and preserve personal autonomy.

Factor 2: Passive / Security / Dependent Orientation

The second major factor accounts for approximately 26% of the shared variance, reflecting an emphasis on safety, external guidance, moral alignment, and interpersonal affiliation:

• Dependence (Need I): Factor loading = .81
• Economic Security (Need K): Factor loading = .76
• Affection and Interpersonal Relationships (Need B): Factor loading = .64
• Moral Value Scheme (Need H): Factor loading = .55
• Social Welfare (Need E): Factor loading = .49

This factor embodies a receptive, security-seeking orientation in which the employee seeks safety within organizational boundaries, values communal harmony, and prefers structured supervision over personal exposure to risk.

Bipolar Oppositions and Residual Variance

The remaining dimensions—Recognition and Approbation (Need A) and Socioeconomic Status (Need G)—demonstrate complex, cross-loading bifurcations between Factors 1 and 2. Both constructs tap external reward structures, bridging assertive ambitions for high social standing with passive desires for social validation. In modern structural equation modeling (SEM), a two-factor second-order model demonstrates acceptable fit indices (RMSEA = .058, CFI = .91, TLI = .89) when these cross-loadings are accommodated.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Occupational Attitudes Survey is a comprehensive, multi-part, self-administered psychometric battery. It is structured into five distinct operational sections, each employing specialized response formats and directions designed to minimize response sets and apperceptive defensiveness:

• Test Type: Comprehensive Multi-Trait Vocational Needs, Need Satisfaction, and Job Satisfaction Battery.
• Target Population: Adult working populations, corporate employees, professionals, semiprofessionals, and vocational counseling clients.
• Structural Administration Sections:
  • Part A (Need-Strength Scales – Third-Person Attitudinal Identification): 48 items presenting direct statements made by diverse working individuals. Respondents rate their agreement with the attitude expressed on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = no agreement at all to 5 = complete agreement). 4 items represent each of the 12 needs.
  • Part B (Over-All Job Satisfaction Scale): 3 criterion items evaluating general occupational satisfaction. Item 1 utilizes an 8-point evaluative scale (ranging from “hate it” to “like it extremely well”); Item 2 utilizes a 6-point comparative social normative scale (ranging from “almost everybody likes their jobs better than I do” to “I like my job better than practically anybody else”); Item 3 is a qualitative, open-ended sentence completion item.
  • Part C (Need-Strength Scales – Likes, Daydreams, and Projective Memories): 36 items exploring recreational preferences, daydreams, childhood recollections, epitaph aspirations, and personal diary entries. Scored on a 5-point agreement scale (1 = don’t like or agree with idea at all to 5 = like or agree with idea completely). 3 items represent each of the 12 needs.
  • Part D (Need-Satisfaction in Work Scales): 24 items assessing the specific degree of gratification of each need within the respondent’s current job. Scored on a 5-point satisfaction scale (1 = not at all satisfied to 5 = completely satisfied). 2 items represent each of the 12 needs.
  • Part E (Need-Strength Scales – Hypothetical Occupational Roles): 17+ items presenting situational occupational vignettes (policeman, chemical engineer, clergyman, baseball player, army officer). Respondents rate how important specific facets of these jobs would be to their satisfaction on a 5-point scale (1 = of no importance to my satisfaction to 5 = of top importance to my satisfaction).
• Keying System: Items across Parts A, C, D, and E are preceded by a letter key representing one of the twelve theoretical needs:
  • (A) Recognition and Approbation
  • (B) Affection and Interpersonal Relationships
  • (C) Mastery and Achievement
  • (D) Dominance
  • (E) Social Welfare
  • (F) Self-Expression
  • (G) Socioeconomic Status
  • (H) Moral Value Scheme
  • (I) Dependence
  • (J) Creativity and Challenge
  • (K) Economic Security
  • (L) Independence
• Scoring and Computational Rules:
  1. Need-Strength Score: For each of the 12 needs, sum or average the ratings across corresponding keyed items in Part A, Part C, and Part E. This identifies the respondent’s personal Need Hierarchy, isolating their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, through 12th strongest needs.
  2. Job Need-Satisfaction Score: For each of the 12 needs, calculate the mean of the 2 keyed items in Part D to yield a satisfaction index (range: 1.0 to 5.0) for that specific need in the respondent’s current job.
  3. Strongest Needs Satisfaction Index: Compute the arithmetic mean of the Part D satisfaction scores corresponding exclusively to the individual’s two highest-ranking needs identified in Step 1.
  4. Over-All Job Satisfaction Score (Part B): Transform Item 1 (scored 1 to 8) and Item 2 (scored 1 to 6) into standardized z-scores or combine via linear conversion tables into a single composite metric (Item 3 serves as a qualitative diagnostic cross-check).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Occupational Attitudes Survey was published in 1953 by the American Psychological Association (APA) in Psychological Monographs: General and Applied (Vol. 67, No. 14, Whole No. 364, pp. 1–29). Because works published in the United States prior to 1964 required formal copyright renewal at the end of their initial 28-year copyright term, and the original monograph entered the public domain under US copyright law without formal renewal, the full text and individual items of the survey are widely accessible for academic, clinical, and non-commercial research purposes.

Researchers intending to administer the battery for commercial consulting, digital product development, or widespread institutional deployments should cite the original author (Robert H. Schaffer) and reference the APA monograph. No licensing fees or royalties are mandated for non-commercial scholarly research and academic replication.

References

• Hoppock, R. (1935). Job satisfaction. Harper & Brothers.
• Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054346
• Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality: A clinical and experimental study of fifty men of college age. Oxford University Press.
• Schaffer, R. H. (1953). Job satisfaction as related to need satisfaction in work. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 67(14), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093658
• Vroom, V. H. (1964). Work and motivation. John Wiley & Sons.
• Weiss, D. J., Dawis, R. V., England, G. W., & Lofquist, L. H. (1967). Manual for the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire. Minnesota Studies in Vocational Rehabilitation, 22, 1–120.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)