The Overall Job Satisfaction scale<\/strong> (OJS), originally conceptualized and validated by Arthur H. Brayfield<\/a> and Harold F. Rothe in 1951, represents one of the most foundational and enduring psychometric instruments in industrial-organizational psychology and organizational behavior. Designed to assess an employee's global affective and cognitive evaluation of their working life, the original instrument consists of 18 self-report items evaluated on a 5-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree<\/em>) to 5 (Strongly Agree<\/em>). In response to organizational demands for brevity in multi-construct survey batteries, Agho, Price, and Mueller (1992)<\/a> extracted and validated a widely adopted 6-item short form. Both versions measure a unidimensional global construct, capturing overarching satisfaction rather than discrete facet-level evaluations such as pay, supervision, or physical working conditions. Psychometric evaluations across diverse occupational cohorts have consistently established high internal consistency, with Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranging between .88 and .91 for the full 18-item scale and .83 to .90 for the 6-item short form. Confirmatory factor analytic investigations have affirmed its construct validity, demonstrating robust discriminant validity from related organizational constructs, including organizational commitment and job involvement. Furthermore, the scale exhibits significant convergent and criterion-related validity through established relationships with job autonomy, distributive justice, supervisory support, occupational stress, and objective performance metrics, as well as multi-source convergence with significant-other evaluations. This article provides an exhaustive psychometric compendium of the OJS, outlining its theoretical underpinnings, structural properties, scoring protocols, and research applications.<\/p>\n Overall Job Satisfaction, Brayfield-Rothe Scale, Job Attitudes, Organizational Behavior, Psychometrics, Affective Well-being, Employee Morale, Measurement Theory, Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Construct Validity<\/p>\n The original 18-item Overall Job Satisfaction scale was constructed by:<\/p>\n Prominent methodological adaptations and short forms were subsequently developed and validated by:<\/p>\n The fundamental purpose of the Overall Job Satisfaction scale is to quantify an individual's global attitude toward their work as an integrated whole, rather than disaggregating work into segmented operational components. When Brayfield and Rothe formulated the measure in 1951, extant job attitude assessments were heavily skewed toward commercial morale surveys or highly localized industrial indices that suffered from poor psychometric standardization, lack of generalizability across occupational classes, and confounding contamination with community or general life satisfaction.<\/p>\n Brayfield and Rothe sought to develop an objective, easily administrable, and theoretically sound instrument capable of yielding an overarching index of job satisfaction that could be applied with equal validity to clerical, managerial, service, and manual labor personnel. In applied organizational settings, the scale serves as a macro-level diagnostic barometer, enabling human resource practitioners, occupational health psychologists, and executives to monitor institutional morale, track longitudinal changes following organizational restructuring, evaluate the psychological impact of organizational changes, and benchmark organizational health.<\/p>\n In academic research, the instrument addresses a critical methodological dichotomy in organizational scholarship: the distinction between facet-specific<\/em> satisfaction and global<\/em> satisfaction. Facet instruments—such as the Job Descriptive Index<\/a> (JDI) or the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ)—assess discrete workplace dimensions (e.g., pay, promotion opportunities, coworkers, supervisor competence, task variety). However, theoretical psychometrics confirms that global job satisfaction is not simply the algebraic sum of individual facet ratings; individuals apply idiosyncratic cognitive weighting schemes to facets depending on their subjective values, life stages, and occupational expectations. The OJS captures this gestalt cognitive-affective synthesis, making it an indispensable tool for structural equation modeling of employee withdrawal, turnover intentions, burnout, absenteeism, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and subjective well-being.<\/p>\n The construct operationalized by the OJS is global job satisfaction<\/strong>, defined as an evaluative affective and cognitive state reflecting an individual's overall appraisal of their job experience. Psychometrically, the construct is conceptualized as a single-factor, bipolar latent variable extending along a continuum from severe negative affective aversion to enthusiastic positive psychological fulfillment.<\/p>\n Brayfield and Rothe explicitly defined job satisfaction as an “attitude,” drawing upon early 20th-century social psychological frameworks that characterize an attitude as an enduring predisposition to experience feeling-states and behave in a characteristic manner toward an attitude object—in this instance, the respondent's ongoing employment situation. The construct encompasses two tightly intertwined dimensions:<\/p>\n Importantly, the construct of global job satisfaction is conceptually distinct from adjacent occupational constructs. While work engagement<\/em> denotes a high-energy, dedicated, and absorbed motivational state, job satisfaction represents an evaluative, often satiated state of contentment. Similarly, while organizational commitment<\/em> binds the individual's identity and loyalty to the broader employing institution, job satisfaction focuses specifically on the immediate experience and appraisal of the work role itself.<\/p>\n The development and longevity of the Overall Job Satisfaction scale are situated at the intersection of several influential theoretical paradigms in organizational psychology and attitude theory.<\/p>\n During the 1930s and 1940s, psychometric theory underwent a major transformation driven by L. L. Thurstone<\/a>'s method of equal-appearing intervals and Rensis Likert<\/a>'s summated rating scale methodology. Brayfield and Rothe integrated both traditions. They initially generated an extensive pool of potential items reflecting varying degrees of job satisfaction, which were subsequently judged and categorized by an expert panel along a Thurstone-style 11-point affective continuum. Items exhibiting excessive variability in judge sorting (high Q-values) were discarded as ambiguous, and the surviving items spanning the entire evaluative continuum were formatted into a Likert-style summated rating scale. This rigorous dual-methodological foundation ensured that the scale items possessed strong linguistic clarity and consistent psychological intervals.<\/p>\n The scale directly inherited the theoretical orientation pioneered by Robert Hoppock (1935), whose seminal monograph Job Satisfaction<\/em> posited that an employee's psychological orientation toward work represents an integrated, subjective equilibrium. Hoppock maintained that while employees can articulate distinct dissatisfaction with specific operational facets, their overall behavior (e.g., quitting, maintaining tenure, psychological withdrawal) is governed by an overarching holistic attitude. Brayfield and Rothe codified this theoretical orientation into a standardized psychometric instrument designed to transcend the specific trade idiosyncrasies of Hoppock's early interview methodologies.<\/p>\n In subsequent decades, the theoretical interpretation of the OJS was substantially reinforced by Edwin A. Locke's (1976) Value-Percept Theory<\/a>. Locke conceptualized job satisfaction as a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job as achieving or facilitating the achievement of one's job values. Because individuals possess radically divergent value hierarchies (e.g., one employee prioritizes high remuneration over autonomy, whereas another values creative expression over security), measuring individual facets and calculating an unweighted arithmetic sum introduces systematic measurement error. The OJS allows the respondent's cognitive processing system to automatically perform this internal weighting, yielding a pure, ecologically valid measure of the net value-percept discrepancy.<\/p>\n Extensive psychometric validation over more than seven decades has provided robust evidence supporting the construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity of the Overall Job Satisfaction scale in both its 18-item and 6-item forms.<\/p>\n Construct validation studies have repeatedly confirmed theoretically predicted associations between the OJS and a wide range of antecedent, correlational, and outcome variables. In comprehensive empirical investigations by Agho, Price, and Mueller (1993), Aryee, Fields, and Luk (1999), and Judge, Locke, Durham, and Kluger (1998), overall job satisfaction measured by this scale exhibited statistically significant positive correlations with:<\/p>\n Conversely, the scale correlates negatively with debilitating workplace stressors and structural organizational pathologies:<\/p>\n A perennial challenge in organizational behavior is establishing that self-reported attitude measures reflect empirically distinct phenomena rather than a generalized affective response bias or common method variance. Brooke, Russell, and Price (1988)<\/a> conducted a rigorous confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine whether job satisfaction (operationalized via the Brayfield-Rothe items), organizational commitment, and job involvement represented distinct constructs. Their structural modeling demonstrated that a three-factor model yielded superior fit over alternative single-factor or two-factor models, providing definitive statistical evidence that the OJS measures a psychological reality distinct from institutional loyalty or ego-involvement in work.<\/p>\n Furthermore, Agho et al. (1992) demonstrated robust discriminant validity between the 6-item OJS and dispositional affectivity measures, establishing that while positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA) influence job attitudes, the OJS captures substantial unique variance attributable to the work environment itself.<\/p>\n A notable limitation of many self-report surveys is vulnerability to self-presentation biases. In an innovative multi-source validation study, Judge, Locke, Durham, and Kluger (1998)<\/a> gathered significant-other (spouse or partner) evaluations of the focal employee's job satisfaction alongside self-reports. The correlation between the employee's self-reported OJS score and the significant-other report was substantial (r<\/em> = .68, p<\/em> < .001). This convergence between independent observers validates that the scale captures authentic, behaviorally observable psychological states that manifest outside the formal workplace<\/span>.<\/p>\n The Overall Job Satisfaction scale has demonstrated exceptional reliability across diverse samples, cultures, and occupational sectors.<\/p>\n In their initial validation with a sample of 231 female clerical workers, Brayfield and Rothe (1951) reported a split-half reliability coefficient, corrected via the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula, of .87. Subsequent contemporary investigations utilizing Cronbach's coefficient alpha have repeatedly demonstrated high internal consistency for the complete 18-item instrument:<\/p>\n The shortened 6-item version developed by Agho, Price, and Mueller (1992) exhibits similarly robust internal consistency despite its concise length:<\/p>\n Longitudinal investigations assessing the temporal stability of the scale across intervals ranging from several weeks to one year typically yield test-retest correlations between r<\/em> = .60 and r<\/em> = .75. These values reflect the dual nature of job satisfaction as an attitude possessing both a stable dispositional-evaluative baseline and sensitivity to real environmental changes (such as promotion, leadership changes, or salary adjustments)<\/span>.<\/p>\n The structural dimensionality of the OJS has been rigorously examined via both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).<\/p>\n Brayfield and Rothe (1951) designed the 18-item instrument as a strictly unidimensional measure. Early exploratory principal component analyses generally extracted a dominant first factor accounting for the vast majority of common variance (often exceeding 45% to 55%), with all items loading substantially (> .45) on this primary dimension. However, subsequent methodological inquiries identified an artificial secondary factor emerging in unconstrained exploratory analyses, driven entirely by item polarity (i.e., a method artifact distinguishing positively worded items from reverse-worded items)<\/span>.<\/p>\n When examined through CFA, structural equation models that include a substantive latent factor (Global Job Satisfaction) alongside an orthogonal method factor accounting for reverse-worded items demonstrate outstanding model fit:<\/p>\n To eliminate the psychometric noise caused by redundant items and minimize method variance, Agho et al. (1992) conducted systematic factor analyses on the original item pool. They extracted six high-performing items that loaded cleanly onto a single latent dimension without cross-loading on affective disposition factors. In CFA studies across diverse industries, the 6-item short form demonstrates unidimensional structural validity without necessitating complex post-hoc correlated error terms. Standardized factor loadings on the single global latent construct routinely fall between .62 and .88, confirming that each indicator provides substantial information regarding the underlying latent variable.<\/p>\n The Overall Job Satisfaction scale was originally published in 1951 by Arthur H. Brayfield and Harold F. Rothe in the Journal of Applied Psychology<\/em>, an official publication of the American Psychological Association (APA). Under United States copyright statutes governing academic works published prior to 1978, the instrument has entered the public domain for academic, scholarly, and non-commercial research purposes, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is accorded to the original authors.<\/p>\n The shortened 6-item form was published in 1992 by Augustine O. Agho, James L. Price, and Charles W. Mueller in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology<\/em> (published by Wiley on behalf of the British Psychological Society). Commercial practitioners intending to integrate either version into proprietary diagnostic software, commercial employee testing suites, or monetized consulting platforms should consult APA and British Psychological Society permissions guidelines. Academic researchers and students may administer the items without fee or written permission under standard fair-use scientific conventions.<\/p>\n Agho, A. O., Mueller, C. W., & Price, J. L. (1993). Determinants of employee job satisfaction: An empirical test of a causal model. Human Relations<\/em>, 46(8), 1007–1027. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/001872679304600806<\/a><\/p>\n Agho, A. O., Price, J. L., & Mueller, C. W. (1992). Discriminant validity of measures of job satisfaction, positive affectivity and negative affectivity. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology<\/em>, 65(3), 185–196. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1111\/j.2044-8325.1992.tb00494.x<\/a><\/p>\n Aryee, S., Fields, D., & Luk, V. (1999). A cross-cultural test of a model of the work-family interface. Journal of Management<\/em>, 25(4), 491–511. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/014920639902500402<\/a><\/p>\n Brayfield, A. H., & Rothe, H. F. (1951). An index of job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology<\/em>, 35(5), 307–311. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/h0055617<\/a><\/p>\n 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<\/em>, 73(2), 139–145. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/0021-9010.73.2.139<\/a><\/p>\n Cook, J. D., Hepworth, S. J., Wall, T. D., & Warr, P. B. (1981). The experience of work: A compendium of 249 measures and their use<\/em>. Academic Press.<\/p>\n Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance<\/em>, 16(2), 250–279. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/0030-5073(76)90016-7<\/a><\/p>\n Hoppock, R. (1935). Job satisfaction<\/em>. Harper & Brothers.<\/p>\n 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<\/em>, 83(1), 17–34. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/0021-9010.83.1.17<\/a><\/p>\n Locke, E. A. (1976). The nature and causes of job satisfaction. In M. D. Dunnette (Ed.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology<\/em> (pp. 1297–1349). Rand McNally.<\/p>\n Moorman, R. H. (1991). Relationship between organizational justice and organizational citizenship behaviors: Do fairness perceptions influence employee citizenship? Journal of Applied Psychology<\/em>, 76(6), 845–855. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/0021-9010.76.6.845<\/a><\/p>\n O'Neill, B. S., & Mone, M. A. (1998). Investigating equity sensitivity as a moderator of relations between self-efficacy and workplace attitudes. Journal of Applied Psychology<\/em>, 83(5), 805–816. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/0021-9010.83.5.805<\/a><\/p>\n Pillai, R., Schriesheim, C. A., & Williams, E. S. (1999). Fairness perceptions and trust as mediators for transformational and transactional leadership: A two-sample study. Journal of Management<\/em>, 25(6), 897–933. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/014920639902500606<\/a><\/p>\n Shore, L. M., Newton, L. A., & Thornton, G. C. (1990). Job and organizational attitudes in relation to employee behavioral intentions. Journal of Organizational Behavior<\/em>, 11(1), 57–67. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/job.4030110107<\/a><\/p>\nKeywords<\/h2>\n
Authors<\/h2>\n
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Purpose<\/h2>\n
Psychological Construct<\/h2>\n
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Theoretical Framework<\/h2>\n
1. Attitude Theory and the Thurstone-Likert Scaling Paradigm<\/h3>\n
2. Hoppock's Global Satisfaction Model<\/h3>\n
3. Locke's Value-Percept Theory<\/h3>\n
Validity<\/h2>\n
1. Convergent and Correlational Validity<\/h3>\n
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2. Discriminant Validity<\/h3>\n
3. Multi-Source and Criterion Validity<\/h3>\n
Reliability<\/h2>\n
1. Internal Consistency (Cronbach's Alpha)<\/h3>\n
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2. Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability)<\/h3>\n
Factor Analysis<\/h2>\n
1. Dimensionality of the Original 18-Item Scale<\/h3>\n
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2. Factor Structure of the 6-Item Short Form<\/h3>\n
Instrument \/ Measurement Tool<\/h2>\n
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1 → 5<\/code>, 2 → 4<\/code>, 3 → 3<\/code>, 4 → 2<\/code>, 5 → 1<\/code>. In the 6-item version, only Item 1 (Item 6 of the original scale) is reverse-scored.<\/li>\nPermissions & Fee and Test Year<\/h2>\n
References<\/h2>\n
13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)<\/h2>\n