An instrument to measure job satisfaction of nursing home administrators

The NHA-JSQ subscales were developed from pilot survey activities with 93 administrators, content analysis, and a research panel. The resulting survey was sent to 1,000 nursing home administrators. Factor analyses were used to determine the psychometric properties of the instrument.Of the 1,000 surveys mailed, 721 usable surveys were returned (72 percent response rate). The factor analyses show that the items were representative of six underlying factors (i.e., coworkers, work demands, work content, work load, work skills, and rewards).The NHA-JSQ represents a short, psychometrically sound job satisfaction instrument for use in nursing homes.Job satisfaction is defined as "the favorableness or unfavorableness with which employees view their work" [1]. Some recent research would suggest that job satisfaction of employees within an organization is related to an organization's ability to change [2]. Since a consistent theme in the literature for the past 20 years (or more) has been the inability of some nursing homes to change in a meaningful way, especially in the area of quality of care [3], in this context improving job satisfaction may be important in improving some aspects of the industry.Job satisfaction of nursing home administrators (NHAs) may be especially important, because administrators can have a pervasive influence on facility performance and quality of care [4]. Castle [5], for example, has shown a positive association between NHA turnover and the resident outcomes of catheterization, restraint use, pressure ulcers, psychoactive medications, and quality of care deficiencies. Smith, Shortell, and Saxberg describe NHAs as "the critical variable affecting quality of care" [6]. Singh and Schwab [7] have examined the organizational destabilization that can occur when NHAs turnover [7]. Resident satisfaction would also appear to be influenced by NHAs [8]. Given the importance of NHAs and their potential impact on quality, a valid and reliable instrument to ass