Overall job satisfaction: how good are single versus multiple‐item measures?

Managers interested in finding out the overall job satisfaction levels of their workers often face the problem of the appropriate measure of job satisfaction to adopt: single versus multiple‐item? This study sets out to compare the results of a single versus a multiple‐item measure employed to investigate the job satisfaction of university teachers. The purpose of the study was to ascertain the superiority or otherwise of the measures in ascertaining the overall job satisfaction of workers. The outcome of the study shows that the single‐item measure overestimated the percentage of people satisfied with their jobs and grossly underestimated both the percentage of dissatisfied workers and those who show indifference in comparison with the figures of the multiple‐item measure. Our conclusion, therefore, is that the results from the single‐item measure tend to paint a rosier picture of job satisfaction than the impression conveyed from the multiple‐item measure would justify.