Job Characteristics Inventory

Description

This measure (Job Characteristics Inventory) was originally developed by Sims, Szilagyi, and Keller (1976) to describe employee perceptions about their jobs. The measure uses 30 items that can be grouped into six subscales indicating the extent to which a job involves variety, autonomy, feedback, interaction with others, task iden­tity, and friendship. All 30 items have also been combined and used as a sin­gle measure of job complexity (Ganzach, 1998).

Reliability

Coefficient alphas of the six subscales for variety, autonomy, feedback, interaction with others, task identity, and friendship ranged from .76 to .84 (Aryee, Chay, & Chew, 1996; Dodd & Ganster, 1996; Ganzach, 1998; Mathieu, Hofmann, & Farr, 1993; Williams, Gavin, & Williams, 1996).

Validity

he subscales for autonomy, feedback, and identity correlated positively with satisfaction with growth and supervision. Autonomy correlated negatively with specialization. Variety was correlated negatively with standardization and specialization (Mathieu et al., 1993). Williams et al. (1996) examined the JDS with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and found that job complexity was a one-dimensional construct that was empiri­cally distinct from job satisfaction, role overload, role ambiguity, and role conflict. Dodd and Ganster (1996) found that objective job measures corre­lated positively with employee perceptions of jobs obtained with the Job Characteristics Inventory.

Source

Items

Responses are obtained on a 5-point Likert-type scale. For Items 1-13, the anchors are 1 = very little, 3 = moderate amount, and 5 = very much. For

Items 14-30, the anchors are 1 = minimum amount, 3 = moderate amount, and 5 = maximum amount.

1. How much variety is there in your job?
2. How much are you left on your own to do your own work?
3. How often do you see projects or jobs through to completion?
4. To what extent do you find out how well you are doing on the job as you are working?
5. How much opportunity is there to meet individuals whom you would like to develop friendship with?
6. How much of your job depends upon your ability to work with others?
7. How repetitious are your duties?
8. To what extent are you able to act independently of your supervisor in performing your job function?
9. To what extent do you receive information from your superior on your job performance?
10. To what extent do you have the opportunity to talk informally with other employees while at work?
11. To what extent is dealing with other people a part of your job?
12. How similar are the tasks you perform in a typical work day?
13. To what extent are you able to do your job independently of others?
14. The feedback from my supervisor on how well I’m doing
15. Friendship from my co-workers
16. The opportunity to talk to others on my job
17. The opportunity to do a number of different things
18. The freedom to do pretty much what I want on my job
19. The degree to which the work I’m involved with is handled from beginning to end by myself
20. The opportunity to find out how well I am doing on my job
21. The opportunity in my job to get to know other people
22. The amount of variety in my job
23. The opportunity for independent thought and action
24. The opportunity to complete work I start
25. The feeling that I know whether I am performing my job well or poorly
26. The opportunity to develop close friendships in my job
27. Meeting with others in my work
28. The control I have over the pace of my work
29. The opportunity to do a job from the beginning to end (i.e., the chance to do a whole job)
30. The extent of feedback you receive from individuals other than your

• Items 1, 7, 12, 17, and 22 form a subscale for job variety.
• Items 2, 8, 13, 18, 23, and 28 form a subscale for autonomy.
• Items 4, 9, 14, 20, and 25 form a subscale for feedback. Items 6, 11, and 30 form a subscale for dealing with others. Items 3, 19, 24, and 29 form a subscale for task identity.
• Items 5, 10, 15, 16, 21, 26, and 27 form a subscale for friendship.