Job Difficulty as Interpreted by Incumbents: A Study of Nurses and Engineers

Abstract

Job difficulty is a concept that can play a prominent role in the application of management implemented job redesign, training, performance appraisal, and goal setting programs in organizations. Interviews, card sorting, and categorization procedures were used with randomly selected nurses and engineers to develop occupation specific job difficulty scales. The scales were then administered to 130 nurses and 159 engineers. Separate factor analyses revealed three job difficulty dimensions for nurses and three for engineers. ANOVA and stepwise multiple regression were used to examine the relationships between the dimensions and such outcomes as satisfaction, job tension, summated performance ratings, and objective performance measures. It was determined that the various job difficulty dimensions were differentially related to the outcome measures in both groups.