James F. McNamara

Job Satisfaction in Educational Organizations: A Synthesis of Research Findings

This inquiry synthesized empirical findings on job satisfaction published in the first 26 volumes of Educational Administration Quarterly. A 14-stage model for quantitative synthesis was developed and validated to classify, record, and analyze study characteristics found in the synthesis population of EAQ articles. This synthesis yielded 330 distinct job satisfaction research hypotheses and 613 relational effect sizes. Nearly three fourths of these effect sizes were less than .30, that is, less than moderate in magnitude. Meta-analyses were performed for 6 of the 330 research hypotheses; the largest mean effect sizes were found for the relationships between overall job satisfaction and both role ambiguity and role conflict. These findings seem to lend preliminary support to the Situational Model of Job Satisfaction. Recommendations for reporting research findings and future research into job satisfaction follow from these and other findings.