commonly, social workers take jobs for reasons other than pay but that, on the average, pay levels need to be at least moderate in order for job satisfaction levels to be relatively high.
Another contributor to job satisfaction level appears to be employee perception of safety. In this regard, Timm and Peterson (1982) reported that most research tends to show that strong perceptions of safety are associated with higher levels of job satisfaction.
What can be noted about the just cited research is that contributors to job satisfaction have been examined across diverse populations including both social workers and general organizational or institutional employees. However, the school social worker has not comprised much of the job satisfaction/job factor contributors research. What is needed, therefore, is a study that examines whether these established findings generalize to school social workers. This study proposes such an examination.
Purpose and Rationale For the Study
The purpose of this study is to examine for relationships between selected job factors and job satisfaction in a sample of school social workers. The job factors that will be examined are: (1) supervisory style; (2) perceptions of job safety; (3) case load; (4) salary; and (5) allocation of time to tasks. These factors were selected for examination because they have been repeatedly found to be contributive to job satisfaction levels of employees in general (see: Feldman & Arnold, 1989; Harrell, 1990; Hart, 1988; Oktay, 1992) and to social workers in particular (see: Butler, 1987; Glicken, 1977; Jayarathne & Chess, 1984; Ravitz, 1989; Vinokur, 1991).
However, examination of this literature shows that most of the samples of social workers used in the research were not employed in host settings such as schools--this despite the unique properties of job-related problems generated by these settings. Thus, there is a need to determine whether exist...