Abstract: This study investigated the level of job satisfaction among 230 randomly selected Colleges of Education educators. Five variables: work load, present pay, promotion, supervision and coworkers of Job Descriptive Index (JDI) were adopted for the study. The results showed that educators were most satisfied with their work load followed by coworkers, supervision and promotion. Educators expressed a high degree of dissatisfaction with their present pay. Generally, educators were not satisfied with their job. The correlation analysis showed that there was a significant negative correlation between age, education level and academic rank and the various facets that determined job satisfaction.
INTRODUCTION
Job satisfaction has been widely studied and literatures on this issue are quite large (Cranny et al., 1992; Spector, 1997; Locke, 1976). Numerous definitions on the concept of job satisfaction are available. For example, Locke (1976) specified that job satisfaction is a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job experiences. Spector (1997) refined the definition of job satisfaction to constitute an attitudinal variable that measures how a person feels about his or her job, including different facets of the job. Job satisfaction is an overall feeling about one’s job or career or in terms of specific facets of the job or career (e.g., compensation, autonomy, co-workers) and it can be related to specific outcomes such as productivity (Rice et al., 1991).
Quality educators occupy central positions in any educational systems and an educational institution that does not attract and retain a high-caliber teacher/educator evokes particular concern. As revealed in the Guardian Educational Poll, 51.7% of University and Colleges of Education teachers reported that they had considered leaving higher education for another career (Mgbako-Ezennia, 1999). Moreover, educators in the Faculty of Science and Technology have increased incentive to leave academia because of high salaries and better working conditions in business and industry (Ezieke, 1994).
A key variable associated with educators’ decision to leave or remain at his/her institution is job satisfaction (Locke, 1976). Gaining a thorough understanding of job satisfaction has implications for improving the working conditions of employees via providing insights to policy makers and administrators responsible for designing and implementing development strategies and interventions.
Many studies on the determinants of job satisfaction in higher educational institutions in the developed world are available (Hickson and Oshagbemi, 1999; Brewer and McMahan-Landers, 2003; Truell et al., 1998). However, in developing country such as Nigeria, efforts in this direction are scare. An earlier attempt, investigated job satisfaction among heads of post-primary institutions in Delta State, Nigeria (Whawho, 2003 ; Edem and Lawal, 1999). Their papers focused on job content related factors of; work on present job and opportunity for promotion. Hence, the main purpose of this study is to elucidate information about job satisfaction among educators at holistic levels in terms of job-content and job-context related factors of; work on present job, present pay, promotion, supervision and coworkers.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Population and sample: The population for the study consisted of Colleges of Education educator in the Southern parts of Nigeria. Using purely random procedures, the researchers drew a sample of 250 from the estimated 3,186 educators in the study area. The sample size is consistent with the number recommended for the size of the chosen population (Krejcie and Morgan, 1970).
Demographic questionnaire: The researchers created a questionnaire to gather data on the demographic characteristics of respondents. Adopting Brewer and McMahan-Landers (2003) method, the following characteristics were addressed by the questionnaire; (i) Age (ii) Gender (iii) Marital Status (iv) Highest Education Level (v) Academic Rank (vi) Years working in the institution.
Instrument questionnaire: To measure the level of job satisfaction among the randomly selected educators in the College of Education, a questionnaire was developed in line with the Job Descriptive Index (JDI). The five variables of the JDI that was adopted for the study are; work load (work on present job), pay, promotion, supervision and coworkers. The questionnaire had a three-point response format for each variable or facet. The first response is a three point response ‘which is represented by Yes, zero point response is represented by No while 1 point represent ‘cannot decide’. Each variable score is estimated as follows:
The satisfaction or dissatisfaction of work load (work on present job) was measured with 18 questions, with maximum score of 54. Hence if the summed score is equal or greater than 27, it indicates that the respondent has achieved satisfaction with the work on present job.
The satisfaction or dissatisfaction on present pay was measured with 5 questions with maximum score of 15 and hence if the summed score is equal or greater than 7, it indicates that respondents have achieved satisfaction with present pay.
The satisfaction and dissatisfaction on promotion was measured with 9 questions with maximum score of 27 and hence middle score of 13 and above indicates respondent’s satisfaction with promotion and its opportunities.
The satisfaction and dissatisfaction on supervision was measured with 10 questions with a maximum score of 30. Hence if summed score is equal or greater 15, it indicates that the respondents have achieved satisfaction with supervision.
The satisfaction and dissatisfaction on coworkers was measured with 9 questions with a maximum score of 27. Hence if summed score is equal or greater than 13, it indicates that the respondents have achieved satisfaction with coworkers.
Educators overall job satisfaction was measured with 10 questions with a maximum scores is of 30. Hence if summed scores is equal or greater 15, it indicated that the respondents have achieved satisfaction with their job.
Data collection procedure: Respondents were physically contacted by the researchers at the 10 randomly selected Colleges of Education located at the Southern part of Nigeria. The randomly selected participants were issued with questionnaires designed for the study. Questionnaires were retrieved from respondents through personal visits after 2 days. The survey was conducted between February and June 2005.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Of the 250 educators contacted (study sample), 230 which represents 92% response rate was achieved. Respondents did answer all questions and no data were treated as missing values. Data from the demographic questionnaire yielded information about respondent’s demographic characteristics (Table 1).
| Table 1: | Demographic characteristics of the respondents |
Majority of the respondents were in the age group of 45-54 years representing 40.43%. It was followed by the age group of 35-44 years consisting of 31.31. and 16.52% of the respondents were within the age bracket of 25-34 years while 11.74% of the respondents were within the age bracket of 55-64 years. This implies that a reasonable number of experienced employees are due for retirement for service because government stipulates retirement age to be 60 years.
Majority of respondents were male (68.26%) while the others (31.74%) were female. Regarding academic rank, most respondents were lecture 1 (29.56%) followed by senior lecturer (19.13%), principal lecturer (16.96%), lecturer II (13.91%), lecturer III (9.13%), Assistant Lecturer (6.09%) and Readers (5 .22%). Most of the respondents were married contributing 72.60% while (27.40%) were still single.
On the highest education level, all respondents (100%) were university graduates. 75.65% of the respondents have Master’s Degree and only 16.52% have first University Degree. 7.83% of the respondents have Doctor of Philosophy Degree. This means that most of the respondents do not possess the highest degree and to improve the situation policy makers should introduce in-service training to encourage the educators.
On the number of years respondents has been working in the institution, 4.78% of the respondents had less than 2 years of service while 9.14% of respondents have put in between 2-5 years of service. 15.65% of respondents have put in between 6 and 10 years of service and the highest group was from the range of 11 and 15 years indicated by 26.52, 18.26 and 12.17% of the respondents have put in between 16-20 years and 21-25 years of service, respectively. 13.48% of the respondents had greater than 26 years of service.
To determine the level of job satisfaction among Colleges of Education educators, responses from the participants were analyzed using simple statistical tool of mean, percentage and standard deviation (SD). In addition, means and standard deviations for Santhapparaj et al. ( 2005), Brewer and Mc Mahan-Lander (2003) and Whawho (2003) were included to serve as a point of comparison. Although Santhapparaj et al. (2005) was not on job satisfaction among educators inclusion of their findings for this study permits comparison of managers with other occupational groups. The percentage of means score, on the five facets of work load, pay, promotion, supervision and coworkers were calculated (Table 2). Results on Table 2 were presented in descending order to observe the facet reflecting relatively greater and relatively lesser satisfaction levels. The highest value of percentage of mean’s score among the five variables will imply the job facet in which educators were currently most satisfied.
| Table 2: | Ranking of educators Job’s satisfaction on the five variables |
| Table 3: | Overall job satisfaction of colleges of education educators |
| Table 4: | Number of educators satisfied/dissatisfied with their job |
The mean score shows that the educators appeared to be satisfied with the work load (43.68>27), coworkers (21.27>13), supervision (22.03>15) and promotion (18.31>13). The educators expressed their dissatisfaction with their pay with means score of 0.67<7.
From the results presented in Table 3, the educators are highly dissatisfied with their job with the mean score of 10.12<15 inspite of the fact they achieved higher job satisfaction 80.87 and 78.78% on job –content related factors of work load and coworker respectively. The job satisfaction achieved on workload (job-content) is consistent with the job-content related factor of workload of that Whawho (2003) on the job satisfaction among post-primary heads in Delta State of Nigeria. Even though educators were satisfied with four variables of workload, promotion, coworker and supervision, the factor of present pay overrides their overall satisfaction on their work. Job context related factor of present pay have minimized the degree of satisfaction to as low as a mean score of 22.49%. This is in sharp contrast to the work of Santhapparaj et al. (2005) that the overall job satisfaction among women managers in their study is affected the most by job content related factors than job context related factors.
Table 4 describes the number of educators who were satisfied and not satisfied in various aspect of their job. It was observed that the factors like promotion, workload and coworkers have highest number of satisfied educators while the factor of pay have the highest numbers of dissatisfied educators.
| Table 5: | Mean±SD and correlation with age, academic rank and education level aspects of job satisfaction |
Correlation analysis yielded results about the predictive value of demographic factors of academic rank, education and age on job satisfaction (Table 5).
The negative sign of the correlation coefficient (r) indicates that there is inverse relationship between age and these factors. That more aged educator have less level of satisfaction on these factors. They have lesser satisfaction with the factors of pay and promotion with r values of -0.106 and -0.219, respectively. There is a negative relationship between education level and all the factors (pay, promotion, supervision, coworkers and work load and overall job satisfaction). Education status was found to predict significant differences in levels of satisfaction with present pay and promotional opportunities. It indicates that highly educated people expect more from the factors of pay and promotion. Academic rank was found to predict significant differences in levels of satisfaction with pay and promotion.
CONCLUSIONS
To attain and maintain excellence at the College of Education level, in Nigeria educational system, the issue of job satisfaction must be examined and generally addressed. This study opened the door for in-depth, systematic exploration and discussion of pay on job satisfaction among Colleges of Education educators.
This study examined the level of job satisfaction of educators in Colleges of Education in Southern Nigeria. The results of the study indicated that educators were most satisfied with their workload (work on present job) followed by coworkers, supervision and promotion and least satisfied with their pay. The results show that no separate and distinct factors of job-content and job-context leads to job satisfaction or dissatisfaction but if they are together they contribute to job satisfaction/dissatisfaction. The results of the study indicated that demographic factors of age, education level and academic rank on the factors of workload, promotion, supervision, coworkers and pay do have weak correlation.
This finding has implications for how job satisfaction should be addressed in the Colleges of Education context. Administrators/policy makers interested in improving job satisfaction among educators in Colleges of Educators should direct attention toward improving pay. Results of this study revealed that the mean score for overall job satisfaction was significantly low (22.49) than the maximum mean score of 30. Administrators should seek to understand why educators reported dissatisfaction with pay.
The study’s relatively small sample size should be taken into consideration and hence replication of the study with a larger sample size is recommended for further study. Future research efforts should include facets such as fringe benefits, operating conditions and communications.