Employees' satisfaction with their jobs offers important clues concerning the health and profitability of an organization. Measures of strengths and weaknesses tell practitioners where improvements can be made. Researchers gain broader understanding of how situations affect feelings and behavior. The Job Descriptive Index (JDI) measures five important aspects or facets of job satisfaction. The Job in General (JIG) scale evaluates overall job satisfaction. This page gives a brief overview, including how the measure can be obtained.

Description

The Job Descriptive Index (JDI) is designed to measure employees' satisfaction with their jobs. The JDI is easy to administer and score, easy to read, simple in format, and nationally normed. After 40 years of research and application it remains one of the most widely used measures of job satisfaction (DeMeuse, 1985; Zedeck, 1987).

The five facets of the JDI are Work on Present Job,Present Pay, Opportunities for Promotion, Supervision, and Coworkers. These serve to diagnose important aspects of the job. The Job in General scale was developed to evaluate overall, global satisfaction with the job. (Ironson, Smith, Brannick, Gibson, & Paul, 1989). The JDI and JIG are bundled and sold together for completeness.

The full-length JDI subscales contain either 9 or 18 items, with an overall total of 72 items. Each item is very short--a descriptive word or phrase. Click here to see sample JDI items..Administered in conjunction with the full-length Job In General, there are 90 items.

Recently, an abridged version of the JDI was developed. The abridged JDI (AJDI) contains 25 items overall (5 items for each facet), and the abridged JIG (AJIG) contains 8 items. So, the more thorough JDI contains 90 items, and the abridged versions contin 33 items.

The JDI has been translated into many different languages and dialects. A considerable body of research on the instrument since its publication has provided support for its reliability and validity. These are reported in the revised manual (Balzer et al., 1997) together with new national norms for JDI and JIG.