Researching Job Satisfacrion

Your research topic ideas; Job satisfaction data
Exercise 1. Your curiosity about your future work life
Remember that social research starts with curiosity. You’ll be spending a lot of time on
your research question this semester, so you want it to be something that genuinely
interests you. The goal of this exercise is to brainstorm lots of ideas, so that later you
can consider whether some could be interesting topics for your research project.
a. Brainstorm in pairs.
Pair up with someone and find out two occupations s/he aspires to, and take turns
asking each other some of the 21 questions in the Curiosities Table below, one column
at a time. (For example, for the top right cell, you could ask, “What are you curious
about with the pay for school psychologists?”)
If you have no curiosity, leave that cell blank - but you should stretch yourself to
generate at least 6 areas of curiosity. Take notes on what the other person says, then
give him or her the notes. Then type up your own curiosities.
CURIOSITIES TABLE
What are you about professional 1st occupation you 2nd occupation you
curious about…. working life aspire to aspire to
generally ___________ ___________
pay?
ranks of jobs?
job satisfaction
and job stress?
gender roles?
work sites?
(sizes, types)
work hours and

family/work
balance?)
anything else?
Exercise 2. Looking into the Society for Human Resources
Management report
a) One topic of the SHRM report is employee engagement. Describe how employee
engagement is operationalized in the research, including the type of questions asked
and some of the topics.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
b) Why does asking all these questions result in more valid data than just asking “Are
you engaged at work?”
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
c) What does your generation care about in a job?
i) Table 9 shows differences between generations in aspects of job satisfaction. What

are the factors that tend to be more important to your generation, Millennials, than to
the professor’s generation, Baby Boomers?
1. ____________________________
2. ____________________________
3. ____________________________
4. ____________________________
5. ____________________________
6. ____________________________
7. ____________________________
ii) Bar graph on generational differences
In Excel, make a bar graph comparing the percentages of each generation who find
certain aspects of job satisfaction important or very important. Copy and paste your
chart here.
Exercise 3. Practice operationalizing job stress
In your own research project this semester, you’re going to investigate some aspects of
an occupation or occupations, which will involve picking variables and operationalizing
them. Here is a chance to practice that skill.
a) Imagine you’re doing a study like SHRM did, but your concept is stress on the job.
Let’s say you want to compare the level of job stress between two occupations you
aspire to. How might you operationalize more and less job stress into some measurable
variables? Write some general ideas below.
For each operationalization idea, note whether it is what the SHRM report calls a
“behavior” measure (observable phenomena, “the look”) or an “opinion” measure (self-
perceptions, “the feel”).
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
b) Say you plan to survey people in the jobs you are studying. Using your ideas for
operationalizing the variable job stress, come up with four questions, at least one open-
ended, and at least one using a Likert scale.
Example of an open-ended question:

How do you feel about your job?
Example of a Likert scale:

I dread going to work.
Always Often Sometimes Rarely Never
1. ______________________________________________
2. ______________________________________________
3. ______________________________________________
4. ______________________________________________
Exercise 4 – Operationalizing broad concepts
Some variables are notoriously hard to measure. For each of these concepts, come up
with two ways to operationalize it.
Concept that researcher First way to operationalize Second way to operationalize

wants to use as a variable
1. Being in love or not
2. Religiousity (how
religious)
3. Hard-working or not
4. Good or bad job
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That’s it! You’re done with Lab #3!
You’ve asked yourself what you’re curious about, you’ve analyzed a research report
and you’ve practiced operationalizing a concept.
If you have time left in the lab session, go over your Curiosities table and think about
which ideas could work for your research project.

Researching Job Satisfacrion

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Researching Job Satisfacrion

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Researching Job Satisfacrion

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Your research topic ideas; Job satisfaction data

Exercise 1. Your curiosity about your future work life

work hours and

c) What does your generation care about in a job?

i) Table 9 shows differences between generations in aspects of job satisfaction. What

ii) Bar graph on generational differences

Example of an open-ended question:

Example of a Likert scale:

Concept that researcher First way to operationalize Second way to operationalize

1. Being in love or not

4. Good or bad job

That’s it! You’re done with Lab #3!

You might also like