WHO ARE THE MOST SATISFIED CORRECTIONS OFFICERS, FEDERAL OR STATE EMPLOYEES?

Introduction

Job satisfaction is a very significant factor in the effective and efficient operations of any workplace . If employees are satisfied with their duties , compensation , benefits , and leadership , then this satisfaction can easily translate to better productivity and progress (Trestle , 2000 . In the workplace context of the correctional facility the correctional officer plays an extremely significant role in ensuring the security of the facility and the efficiency of its daily operations This aims to formulate four specific measures of job satisfaction which would lead to a valid and reliable comparison between the

job satisfaction levels of state and federal correctional officers

Duties

According to Trestle (2000 , the most important measure of job satisfaction is the employees ' sense of fulfillment in the duties that they performs . This can be measured through a survey questionnaire containing items that ask about the different responsibilities that correctional officers have . These should preferably be open ended questions that could allow the subjects to express themselves . Questions can include whether each responsibility is relevant or fulfilling . The questions can be evaluated by pinpointing key points in subjects responses and categorizing them as positive , neutral , or negative in terms of relevance and fulfillment of particular responsibilities . We can then compare whether there is a significant difference in the number of positive , negative , and neutral ratings of federal and state correctional officers for each matched duty . Duties that cannot be matched will be used in the overall evaluation only

Compensation

Another important measure of job satisfaction is compensation which Trestle defines as the periodic monetary compensation given for the fulfillment of a job (2000 ,

. 43 . Compensation satisfaction can be best measured for each of the elements of the independent variable by collecting data on personnel compensation and administering a questionnaire that asks what each correctional officer 's salary is . We can then use an appropriate statistical test to measure whether there is a significant difference between the actual and compensation for each of the elements . In case that the two tests show the same results , then we can move on to testing the differences between the actual and compensation of federal and state correctional officers to find out whether one is significantly more satisfied than the other

Benefits

The quality and appropriateness of employee benefits are also reliable measures of job satisfaction . These can be measured in two ways Firstly , the quality of benefits for federal and state correctional officers can be measured independently of their opinion . This can be done by referencing current benefits to standards of adequateness found in related literature . The second way is to include 4-point closed-response questionnaires for each of the current benefits which can be evaluated through Likert measurement . Responses to paired benefits of federal and state correctional officers can be compared

Leadership

Employees satisfaction with the way they are being led is also a good measure of satisfaction wit their job itself . For this measure , we can use standard personnel evaluation forms which can be filled...