A task‐level assessment of job satisfaction

Abstract Research on job satisfaction traditionally has gathered data at the level of the overall job. But a job consists of many distinct tasks —some of which may be enjoyable, complex, and important, and some not. Job satisfaction research so far has not assessed affective or motivational properties of individual tasks; therefore, it is not known how experiences with individual tasks contribute to global job satisfaction. To address that question, a task analysis technique was developed and used to gather detailed descriptions of the time‐allocation, importance, autonomy, attention demands, complexity, and enjoyment of each individual task performed by 573 employees on a diverse sample of jobs. The task‐level data allowed the examination of relationships between task experiences on the one hand, and both global and facet measures of job satisfaction on the other. Results suggested that task‐level measurement assessed different psychological processes than those assessed by traditional global and facet measures. Global and facet measures of job satisfaction were found to be consistent with, but only partially predictable from, individual task properties. Task analysis is a cumbersome process; nevertheless, by complementing traditional, global measurement procedures, task‐level assessment may facilitate new research into the nature of job satisfaction.