Job Satisfaction Survey
JSSPermission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no license fee. Cite the original publication.
A 36-item measure of employee satisfaction with nine work-related facets: Pay, Promotion, Supervision, Fringe Benefits, Contingent Rewards, Operating Conditions, Coworkers, Nature of Work, and Communication. Originally developed for human-service employees and since validated across a wide range of occupations.
Ready-to-cite methods sentence
Citing this in a methods section? See the APA 7 guide (Author–date citations for psychology and the social sciences). Or compare all six citation styles.
Use JSS in Folio Surveyor
Add it to a study with the full items, scoring, and analysis built in.
Reliability & validation
Subscales
Response anchors
Disagree very much · Disagree moderately · Disagree slightly · Agree slightly · Agree moderately · Agree very much
Known limitations
Subscale alphas for Operating Conditions and Coworkers are modest (≈ .60), so interpret these two facets with caution. Use the total score when comparing overall satisfaction across groups; use facet scores when targeting specific interventions.
Original citation
Spector, P. E. (1985). Measurement of human service staff satisfaction: Development of the Job Satisfaction Survey. American Journal of Community Psychology, 13(6), 693-713.
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00929796Questions researchers ask
What does the JSS measure?
A 36-item measure of employee satisfaction with nine work-related facets: Pay, Promotion, Supervision, Fringe Benefits, Contingent Rewards, Operating Conditions, Coworkers, Nature of Work, and Communication. Originally developed for human-service employees and since validated across a wide range of occupations.
How many items does the JSS have?
The Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) has 36 items across 9 subscales: Pay, Promotion, Supervision, Fringe Benefits, Contingent Rewards, Operating Conditions, Coworkers, Nature of Work, Communication.
Is the JSS free to use?
The JSS is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.
Is the JSS reliable?
Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.6–0.91. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.
Who developed the JSS, and how do I cite it?
Spector, P. E. (1985). Measurement of human service staff satisfaction: Development of the Job Satisfaction Survey. American Journal of Community Psychology, 13(6), 693-713. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00929796
Related scales
Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference. Questionnaires are built in Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing, and can be taken to Qualtrics, Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, with their CSV responses brought back for scoring.