Shanghai Police Occupational Characteristics And Job Satisfaction Research

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships between job characteristics and job satisfaction among Shanghai police. It is hypothesized that job satisfaction among Shanghai police can be predicted by job characteristics. This hypothesis was examined within the context of Hackman and Oldham's (1975, 1980) theory of Job Characteristics Model (JCM). Moreover, the construct of life satisfaction, as defined by Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin (1985), is also involved to examine the effect of job characteristics and job satisfaction on individuals' cognitive evaluation of their life.389 in-service policemen were recruited from a routine training program provided by Shanghai Public Security Bureau. The Job Diagnostic Survey (Hackman & Oldham, 1980) was administered to the participants in the form of group test. An additional questionnaire was included to collect demographic information such as sex, age, status of marriage, education, job tenure, position, duty, etc.A series of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) were performed to determine the differences in job characteristics, psychological states, affective outcomes, and context satisfaction based on the demographic variables. To test the hypotheses of the study, structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to calculate the relationships among the constructs by the use of the Linear Structural Relations (LISREL VIII) Program (Joreskog & Sorbom, 1993a, 1993b). Results indicated that both job characteristics and job satisfactions were significantly different based on the demographic variables, such as sex and duty positions. Structural equation modeling did not demonstrate systematic relationships between psychological states and affective outcomes. In another structural equation model, both general job satisfaction and life satisfaction could be well predicted by context satisfactions. It was also found that the younger and better-educated the policemen were, the higher their growth need strength (GNS) was. The implications of the results were discussed and recommendations were suggested.