Job Satisfaction Survey Template
A job satisfaction survey measures how a person feels about the job they hold: its work, its pace, its supervision, its pay and where it leads. Fourteen questions, five worded answers, about three minutes, no name and no email field. The table below says which published instrument you may send.
- 14questions
- About 3 minto complete
- 5 wordsnot bare numbers
- The jobnot the employer
The MSQ, the JSS and the JDI: what each measures and what you may send
Three published instruments own this subject, and each comes with conditions. What they measure, how long they run, and what their rights holders permit.
| Instrument | What it measures | Length | What the rights holder permits | Can an HR team send it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS), Paul Spector | Nine facets of the job in four items each: pay, promotion, supervision, fringe benefits, contingent rewards, operating procedures, coworkers, nature of work and communication.[5] | 36 items | Free use "in return for the sharing of results", with citation and the copyright notice kept on the form. The no-cost index points commercial users to a newer version of the scale.[6][7] | Yes, if you email Spector your means, sample size and a description of your sample, and keep his notice on the form. |
| Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) | Twenty five-item scales in the long form, from ability utilization through to working conditions, plus a general satisfaction scale. The short form keeps one item per scale.[1] | 100 items, 15 to 20 minutes. Short form 20 items, about 5 minutes.[1] | A Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 licence, free "for research or clinical work", which "does not allow commercial use or reproduction for sale".[2] | For research or clinical work, yes, with credit to Vocational Psychology Research. A company survey is neither, so ask them first. |
| Job Descriptive Index (JDI) and Job In General (JIG) | Five facets of the present job: the work, pay, promotions, supervision and coworkers. The JIG measures overall satisfaction on its own.[4] | JDI 72 items, JIG 18 items. The abridged JDI keeps five items per facet.[4] | Free to download from Bowling Green State University once you accept terms: the scales are "for my sole use only", "will not distribute them to any third party", and "may not be reprinted or otherwise published in their full form".[3] | Yes, if you download it yourself and accept those terms in your own name. You may not pass it on, shorten it or change its scoring. |
| This template | One overall item and eleven facet items, all of them about the job a person holds rather than the employer behind it. | 14 items, about 3 minutes | Written for this page and free to copy, edit and translate. No attribution asked for and nothing to accept. | Yes, from anywhere, without asking us. |
The one you may reprint measures something else. The only such instrument anyone can copy freely is a United States federal survey, and three of its four core items ask about the employer rather than the job. That is the employee satisfaction survey.
Why one overall item and eleven facets. One overall question tracks a full scale closely, .67 across 17 studies, while its own reliability can run as low as .45.[10] Enough to trend, not enough to act on.
All 14 questions are already built into the questionnaire maker. Open it, change any wording, and send one link.
The 14 job satisfaction survey questions, facet by facet
Every question, and what a low answer to it is telling you. Copy one facet, copy all 14, or open the template and skip the typing.
Overall
One question for the whole job. It tracks the facets and explains none of them, so it never travels alone.
- Taking your job as a whole, how satisfied are you with it right now?A 4 here sitting above two low facets means someone is coping, not content.
The work itself
What the job consists of. The group people mention first and leave over last.
- How satisfied are you with the work you actually spend the day doing?A low answer is the expensive one: the work itself is the hardest thing on the list to change.
- How satisfied are you with how much this job uses what you are already good at?Low means the person is working below what they can do. That reads as boredom long before it reads as leaving.
- How satisfied are you with the sense that this job is worth doing?Low here with a high answer on pay is a person staying for the money.
Say and workload
The two halves of pressure: how much the job asks, and how much control you have.
- How satisfied are you with how much say you have over the way the work gets done?Low alongside a low answer on the amount of work is the pair to act on first. Either one alone is survivable.
- How satisfied are you with the amount of work this job expects in a normal week?One low answer is a busy month. The same answer next cycle is a staffing decision.
Supervision and colleagues
The people the job puts around you. Neither item rates a named person.
- How satisfied are you with the day to day supervision of your work?This is satisfaction with being supervised, not a verdict on anyone. A low answer says ask, not act.
- How satisfied are you with the colleagues you depend on to get this job done?Low in a job that depends on other people is usually a handover problem, not a personality one.
Credit and pay
What the job gives back, asked about this job and never about fairness between people.
- How satisfied are you with the credit you get for the work you finish?The cheapest thing on the page to fix, and the first to slip when a team is busy.
- How satisfied are you with what this job pays?Low with everything else high is about the amount. Low next to a low credit answer is about being valued.
Where the job leads
Whether the role is a step or a stop, not a question about promotions policy.
- How satisfied are you with what you are learning in this job?Low in the first months of a role is normal. Low in the third year is a warning.
- How satisfied are you with what this job is preparing you for?The item that moves first when someone starts looking, and the one you hear about after the resignation.
Your words, then a closing rating
The open answer sits second to last, so people still have a reason to type.
- If one thing about this job changed tomorrow, what would you pick?The line that explains the ranking. Optional on purpose: a forced box gets one-word answers.
- Compared with what you expected when you took this job, how satisfied are you now?A gap between this and question 1 is the promise the job did not keep.
Why the answer ladder looks lopsided. Every rating here offers five worded answers rather than five numbers: not satisfied, a bit satisfied, satisfied, more than satisfied, completely satisfied. Three of the five sit at or above satisfied. That looks wrong until you see what ordinary labels do: the publisher of the Minnesota questionnaire reports that its 1977 set pushed most distributions to the satisfied end, and that spreading the positive end corrects it.[1] The finding is theirs. The spread is ours, and so is every question above.
Fourteen questions is a once-a-cycle instrument. For a five to ten question read repeated every few weeks, the employee pulse survey is the shorter one.
How to read the answers when there is no good score to hit
Paul Spector, who wrote the JSS, says plainly that there are no cut scores. Read the order of the facets instead.[8]
Why there is no number to hit. Spector publishes norms for his scale, then calls them "a convenience sample of convenience samples".[8] An industry average lifted from anywhere is worth less than your own second run.
The rule that does work. Average the items in each facet, for each job family, and rank the facets highest to lowest. Report that order and the top-to-bottom distance, not one overall percentage, and read it against your own last run.
| Facet | Mean of its items | Rank | Distance from the top facet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supervision and colleagues | 4.4 | 1 | 0.0 |
| The work itself | 4.1 | 2 | 0.3 |
| Say and workload | 3.6 | 3 | 0.8 |
| Credit and pay | 2.6 | 4 | 1.8 |
| Where the job leads | 2.4 | 5 | 2.0 |
| Overall item, not a facet | 3.5 | not ranked | not ranked |
What that example says. The numbers are invented; the shape is the point. This job family likes the people and the work and is two points down on where the job goes next. An overall 3.5 hides that.
Two decisions before you send it. Send one copy per job family, not one per department: a ranking averaged over five different jobs describes none of them. And give the survey to someone who supervises nobody answering it, because whoever owns it can open every answer row and one question rates supervision.
Where the answers point next. When supervision ranks last twice running, the manager effectiveness survey rates that manager by name. When the pay answers are about the gap between people, that is the pay equity survey. Spector found the JSS correlated most strongly with intention of quitting and with commitment, and only modestly with absence or turnover,[9] so where low facets sit in jobs losing people, the employee attrition survey asks that directly.
Job satisfaction survey FAQ
What is the difference between job satisfaction and satisfaction with the employer?
Job satisfaction is measured at the level of the job: its work, its pace, its say, its supervision, its pay. Satisfaction with the employer is measured at the level of the organization, and someone can like the job and be ready to leave the company.
How many questions should a job satisfaction survey have?
Fewer than the advice you will read elsewhere. The publisher of the Minnesota questionnaire puts its 100-item long form at 15 to 20 minutes and its 20-item short form at about 5.[1] Fourteen is one overall question and one to three per facet.
Should the answers be anonymous?
This template asks for no name and no email address. Whoever owns the survey can still open the answers as rows, so decide the smallest group you will report on and tell people that number before they answer.
Methods and sources
What this template is based on
The facet list is the union of the facets the three published instruments name, which is not the licensed part of any of them;[1][4][5] the wording is ours. The answer ladder follows the ceiling-effect finding the MSQ publisher reports about its own 1977 labels;[1] the spread across the five labels is the part that is ours, not every word in them.
Question licensing
Nothing licensed is reproduced. The MSQ is CC BY-NC and bars commercial use;[2] the JDI may not be passed to a third party, reprinted in full or modified;[3] Spector grants free use in return for sharing results, with his notice kept on the form.[6] Copy and edit everything on this page freely.
Limits and disclosure
The reading rule comes from one scale author's own interpretation notes, not from a norm for your organization;[8] the worked facet numbers are invented for the example; the single-item evidence is a 1997 meta-analysis of 17 studies.[10]
SuperSurvey sells the editor this template opens in. The questions, the ladder and the reading rule cost nothing and work in any tool.
References
- Vocational Psychology Research, University of Minnesota. MSQ: Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire. vpr.psych.umn.edu
- Vocational Psychology Research, University of Minnesota. Instrument licensing statement. vpr.psych.umn.edu
- Bowling Green State University. Job Descriptive Index: terms of use and scale request. services.bgsu.edu
- Bowling Green State University. Job Descriptive Index and related scales: measures. bgsu.edu
- Spector, P.E. Job Satisfaction Survey, JSS. paulspector.com. paulspector.com
- Spector, P.E. Conditions for using these assessments. paulspector.com. paulspector.com
- Spector, P.E. Paul's no cost assessments, index page. paulspector.com
- Spector, P.E. Job Satisfaction Survey: interpretation. paulspector.com. paulspector.com (DOC)
- Spector, P.E. "Measurement of human service staff satisfaction: development of the Job Satisfaction Survey." American Journal of Community Psychology 13, no. 6 (1985): 693-713. pubmed.gov
- Wanous, J.P., Reichers, A.E. and Hudy, M.J. "Overall job satisfaction: how good are single-item measures?" Journal of Applied Psychology 82, no. 2 (1997): 247-252. pubmed.gov
Send the job satisfaction survey this week
Fourteen questions, five worded answers, about three minutes. Open it in the editor, change any wording, and send one link per job family.
Use this template