Before you read on, make a prediction: Which U.S. jobs would you predict would be the most fulfilling? In this story from the Washington Post column,"Department of Data" you can explore some fascinating data on U.S. job satisfaction.
In a fun twist, the article also talks about how the construct of "fulfilling work" is measured. (It's not everyday that we get to celebrate construct validity: hooray!)
The data come from the CEV--the Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement, which is part of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.
Here's how the journalist introduces the data:
In 2021 and in 2023, the researchers behind the CEV asked whether you agree or disagree with these four statements:
- I am proud to be working for my employer.
- My main satisfaction in life comes from work.
- My workplace contributes to the community.
- I contribute to the community through my work.
The two years of surveys give us enough responses to start doing some serious analysis — or, in the grand tradition of this column, some less-than-serious analysis.
The Post column presents data (click here and scroll down) showing that agreement with these four items increases with age and with education.
In general, the figures and charts of this story are fun to explore--but they're under copyright, so I can't paste them here. Here are some of the journalist's summary points. You'll see that which profession comes out on top depends on the question.
The workers most likely to say they are proud to be working for their employer and that they gain satisfaction from work are — surprise! — the self-employed.The self-employed who are incorporated — a group that often includes small-business owners — are almost twice as likely as private-sector, for-profit workers to strongly profess pride in their employer.
Government and nonprofit workers fall somewhere in the middle on those [pride and satisfaction] questions. But they rank at the very top on “My workplace contributes to the community” and “I contribute to the community through my work.” Local government workers, who include teachers, take the top spot for strong agreement on both, followed by nonprofit workers. Private-sector, for-profit workers again lag behind.
The jobs that do worse on these measures [of contributing to the community] tend to be in manufacturing or other blue-collar production and extraction jobs, or at the lower-paid end of the service sector. Folks in food services (e.g., bartenders and food prep), janitorial roles and landscaping, and personal services (e.g., barbershops, laundry and hotels) all struggle to find greater meaning in their work. Though some in better-paid service jobs also struggle by some measures — think sales, engineering or software development.
The story indicates that members of the clergy report the most positive answers across all four of the satisfaction items.
a) Do the four items used in this story (included above in this blog post) have face validity as a measure of job satisfaction? Why or why not?
b) Click to the story and scroll to find the line graph that shows agreement with the four items over the lifespan. What do you notice? What do you wonder?
c) One of the concepts in Chapter 5 is internal reliability, or internal consistency, which is relevant when researchers use multiple items to measure the same thing. In this story, the journalist kept the four satisfaction items separate. But based on what you see in the two line graphs, do you think the four items would have internal reliability? That is, would they likely correlate with each other and have a strong Cronbach's alpha?
d) Students often mistrust self-report questions like these. However, in my opinion, the demographic and job category data provide criterion validity evidence that these four questions are construct valid--that is, that people are not just lying or making things up. Specifically, I think the data shows known groups criterion validity for these four items. Can you explain why? Review what known groups criterion validity is, and apply that definition to this new example.
e) A friendly reminder: Frequency claims (such as "local government workers are most likely to think their workplace contributes to their community" need not just construct validity, but also external validity. How would you ask about that for this data set? Do you think this data set is externally valid--why or why not?
For even more fun, the column also includes some charts from a different set of data, showing the happiest, most meaningful, and most stressful daily activities (including spiritual pursuits, volunteering, exercising, and working), as well as charts indicating the happiest places (such as places of worship, one's own home, others' homes, and so 0n). Data-loving psychologists (and research methods students) will enjoy exploring these figures.