1. Background
Human resource is the most important and fundamental capital responsible for development and innovation in organizations. Organizational success depends on the effort and job satisfaction of the employees. Therefore, considering the status of job satisfaction and its influencing factors is among the basic priorities of organizations (1). As the most crucial education and research center, universities play a key role in advancing the society toward the social, economic, and cultural objectives, and faculty members of the universities are considered among the most important components of the academic system (2). In this regard, faculty members of medical science and health service universities have various widespread duties including training expert human resources, researching, providing health services, and performing executive activities (3). The realization of such objectives depends on the job satisfaction of this group (4). Medical science and health service universities need professors with high motivation and job satisfaction for educating students and playing an effective role in improving the healthcare condition of the society because low motivation and lack of job satisfaction among the faculty members could be a threat to social health (5).
Job satisfaction is defined as a positive emotional evaluation and attitude of employees regarding their jobs. Research has shown that job satisfaction is related to a high participation rate of employees for achieving the organization’s objectives, customer satisfaction, increased commitment of employees toward the organization, and increased productivity and profitability of the organization (6, 7). Furthermore, studies regarding job satisfaction of employees have indicated a relationship between job satisfaction and mental and physical health of the employees. This issue has shown a significant relationship with psychological problems, excessive fatigue, self-confidence, depression, and anxiety (8, 9). Also, lack of job satisfaction leads to reduced morale among the employees, anxiety, lack of effort, absence, resignation, service leave, early retirement, and physical and mental discomforts (10, 11). Establishing job satisfaction is the responsibility of the management for maintaining human resources (12). According to many experts in the field of industrial psychology and organizational behavior, job satisfaction is one of the most important research areas, and these experts believe that an individual can effectively help the organization achieve its goals only when that individual is satisfied by his/her job in the first place and is doing a job that he/she is interested in (13). Job satisfaction is influenced by conditions and events that the person experiences in his/her work environment, and thus, management method, organization culture, organization structure, work nature, work conditions, and the method of communication with colleagues have a major role in shaping job satisfaction (7).
Understanding the conditions and influential factors for establishing job satisfaction could be useful for increasing the job satisfaction of faculty members and motivating them for advancing research and educational objectives (14). Given the major importance of job satisfaction in faculty members for improving research and educational goals in the academic environments of Iran, the objective of the present study was to determine the job satisfaction among the faculty members of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences and its relationship with related professional and principal variables.
2. Methods
This descriptive, analytical study was conducted among 165 faculty members of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences in 2016. The sampling was performed by considering the various faculties as clusters and using the simple random sampling method, with a probability proportional to the volume in each of the clusters. The participants thus selected were given questionnaires designed to assess the job satisfaction, and the required information was collected from them. The subjects of the study were made aware of the study method, confidentiality of information, and also the objective of the study, and all of them participated willingly.
The data collection tools for this study included a questionnaire with two parts that were completed as a self-report by the faculty members. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed using the opinions of an expert panel, and the reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed using Cronbach’s alpha test.
The first part of the questionnaire was related to the demographic and professional information and contained eight questions that evaluated the information provided by the participants regarding age (years), sex (male, female), service faculty (health and nutrition, nursing and midwifery, paramedicine, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy), employment status (official, contractual, obligations), status of academic membership (clinical, non-clinical), job history (in years), research opportunity benefit (national, international, not used), and academic ranking (instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, professor).
The second part of the questionnaire included the common and fishman job satisfaction questionnaire with three items for the evaluation of the job satisfaction among the faculty members. For instance, the item “I love my job” included a five-option Likert scale ranging from completely disagree (1 point) to completely agree (5 points).The score for this questionnaire ranged from 3 to 15, with a higher score indicating higher job satisfaction (15). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the study questionnaire was 0.86.
Finally, the collected data were entered into SPSS version 16 statistical software and were analyzed using Pearson correlation, two group independent t-test, and linear regression analysis. It should be noted that after the removal of the incompletely answered questionnaires, 150 questionnaires were analyzed (response rate was 90.9%).
3. Results
The age domain of the faculty members was 26 to 60 years, and their mean age was 40.16 ± 8.12 years. The job history of the faculty members was in the range of 1 to 34 years, and the mean was 11.75 ± 9.53 years. The findings related to the principal, demographic and professional variables are presented in Table 1.
Table 1.The Status of Contextual and Professional Variables
| Variable | No. (%) |
|---|---|
| Sex | |
| Male | 84 (56) |
| Female | 66 (44) |
| Academic ranking | |
| Instructor | 41 (27.3) |
| Assistant professor | 89 (59.4) |
| Associate professor, professor | 20 (13.3) |
| Employment status | |
| Official | 58 (38.7) |
| Contractual | 29 (19.3) |
| K coefficient | 63 (42) |
| Faculty member | |
| Clinical | 65 (43.3) |
| Non-clinical | 84 (56) |
| No response | 1 (0.7) |
| Research opportunity benefit | |
| Domestic | 90 (6.7) |
| Foreign | 17 (11.3) |
| Not used | 122 (81.3) |
| No response | 1 (0.7) |
The mean score for job satisfaction was 12.34 ± 2.32, which indicates that the participants achieved 82.2% of the maximum obtainable job satisfaction score.
The correlations between the age and job history and job satisfaction are presented in Table 2; both showed a linear and significant correlation with job satisfaction.
In Table 3, the relationship between the principal variables and job satisfaction is shown. As evident from the study findings, the mean score for job satisfaction in female faculty members, professors who have used research opportunity, non-clinical faculty members, associate professors, and official faculty members was a little higher than that of the others, but this was not statistically significant (P > 0.05).
Table 3.Examining the Relationship Between Contextual Variables and Job Satisfaction
| Variable | Mean ± SD | Test Statistics | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sex | -0.893 | 0.373 | |
| Male | 12.20 ± 2.14 | ||
| Female | 12.53 ± 2.33 | ||
| Research opportunity benefit | 0.394 | 0.694 | |
| Yes | 12.50 ± 2.10 | ||
| No | 12.30 ± 2.27 | ||
| Service location | -0.861 | 0.390 | |
| Clinical | 12.16 ± 2.30 | ||
| Non-clinical | 12.48 ± 2.18 | ||
| Academic ranking | 0.215 | 0.807 | |
| Instructor | 12.41 ± 2.15 | ||
| Assistant professor | 12.25 ± 2.25 | ||
| Associate professor, professor | 12.60 ± 2.34 | ||
| Employment type | 1.844 | 0.162 | |
| Official | 12.75 ± 1.97 | ||
| Contractual | 12.31 ± 2.31 | ||
| K coefficient | 11.98 ± 2.37 |
Finally, the linear regression analysis for the influence of the principal variable on job satisfaction is presented in Table 4. The optimal pattern was determined in the sixth step; given the findings, longer job history and female gender were stronger predictors of job satisfaction among the faculty members. Overall, the studied variables predicted 8% of the job satisfaction variance.
Table 4.Linear Regression Analysis for the Influence of Principal Variable on Job Satisfaction; Final Pattern of the Sixth Step
| Independent Variables | Standardized Beta | Significance | R2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job history | 0.287 | 0.001 | 0.087 |
| Sex | 0.144 | 0.084 |
4. Discussion
Like many other variables, job satisfaction is influenced by various determinants, and this variable, in turn, affects various other variables. The present study was conducted in the western part of Iran with the objective of determining the status of job satisfaction and related professional and principle factors among the faculty members of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences.
Several studies have indicated that investigating the work environment is an essential element of program planning (16-19). The findings of this study could serve as a preliminary plan for the senior managers of the university to help them improve the status of job satisfaction among their faculty members.
Given the results, 82.2% of the participants achieved the maximum obtainable score for job satisfaction. In this regard, a study performed by Rafiei et al. among the faculty members of Arak University of Medical Sciences demonstrated that 60.7% of the participants achieved the maximum obtainable score for the job satisfaction questionnaire (20). Furthermore, Safi et al. also conducted a study among 94 faculty members of the University of rehabilitation Sciences and Social Welfare and reported that the overall mean job satisfaction score of the faculty members was 72.6 out of 135 (maximum score), which indicated that 53.7% of the participants achieved the maximum obtainable score (21). In their study, Sotodeh et al. reported an average job satisfaction among the faculty members in Semnan University of Medical Sciences and health services (22). Given these findings, the participants in the present study had a rather high job satisfaction, and the values are higher than that reported by other studies performed in Iran; perhaps some of these differences relate to the use of different questionnaires in the different studies, and thus, we should be cautious in the interpretation of the results.
Our findings showed that age and job history have a positive and significant correlation with job satisfaction among the faculty members and, also, that the job history is the strongest predictor of job satisfaction among the studied group. In this regard, Donohue has reported in a study that the job satisfaction level increases with aging (23). Maybe people with a longer job history have obtained peace of mind regarding their employment status and are not worried in this regard, and naturally, this has a positive impact on their job satisfaction. It seems that as the job continuity status of a person improves in an organization, his/her job satisfaction level increases too. This relation seems to be affected by the professional concerns of the faculty members regarding the amount of salary received, job stability, and work environment conditions that have a special significance in each age. In the younger faculty members, concerns regarding the employment status could affect their job satisfaction.
As revealed by our findings, job satisfaction among the faculty members with obligatory employment was lower than that among the others; however, this difference was not statistically significant. In this regards, Billmore et al. showed in their study that people with certain employment status have higher job satisfaction level (24). Furthermore, Flanagen et al. performed a study among nursing education teachers and reported that the people recruited officially had higher job satisfaction (25), which is not in line with the current study findings. However, some studies have also reported that the relationship between the employment type and job satisfaction is not statistically significant (26, 27), which is in line with the findings of our study.
Gender was one of the predicting variables in the present study. In this regard, Cano et al. in Ohio State University showed that the faculty members’ job satisfaction was higher in women compared with men (28). However, Sotodeh et al. did not find a statistically significant difference in job satisfaction based on gender (22). Perhaps the social pressures resulting from the responsibilities in life led to a lower job satisfaction level in men compared with women.
One of the limitations of the present study was that the data collection through questionnaires has the possibility of not obtaining a completely honest response from the participants and, also, the utilization of a short form for evaluating job satisfaction, which could not provide the possibility of evaluating the various domains of job satisfaction.
4.1. Conclusion
The results of the present study demonstrated the necessity of paying more attention to the issue of job satisfaction among faculty members with shorter job history.
