title: Overall job satisfaction: how good are single-item measures?
abstract: A meta-analysis of single-item measures of overall job satisfaction (28 correlations from 17 studies with 7,682 people) found an average uncorrected correlation of .63 (SD = .09) with scale measures of overall job satisfaction. The overall mean correlation (corrected only for reliability) is .67 (SD = .08), and it is moderated by the type of measurement scale used. The mean corrected correlation for the best group of scale measures (8 correlations, 1,735 people) is .72 (SD = .05). The correction for attenuation formula was used to estimate the minimum level of reliability for a single-item measure. These estimates range from .45 to .69, depending on the assumptions made.
authors.affiliation: Department of Management and Human Resources, Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University, Columbus 43210, USA. wanous.l@osu.edu
authors.forename: J P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Wanous
authors.forename: A E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Reichers
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Hudy
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results