| Abstract |
- This thesis is a study of the job satisfaction Home Economics
majors experience from their work in junior executive positions in
retailing, an investigation of their former expectations and approach
to retailing, and an evaluation of certain specific course areas usually
included in clothing, textiles, and related course areas in
Home Economics curriculums.
Information was obtained by surveying women currently in
junior executive positions with retail firms in the western states.
The satisfaction of respondents who had completed requirements
for a degree in Home Economics was then compared with the satisfaction
of young women who had completed requirements for a degree
in any other four-year college curriculum.
It became apparent from a review of the current literature
on job satisfaction studies that three main categories of job satisfaction
are agreed upon by many researchers. These are the satisfaction which the worker's pay and status brings him in the
outside community, the satisfaction the individual receives from
being employed by a certain firm and being in certain surroundings,
and the intrinsic satisfactions of the actual work being done. These
three categories were used as a basis to develop situations which
were felt to influence job satisfaction. These situations were then
used to form the job satisfaction measurement used in this study.
A questionnaire was constructed to measure job satisfaction,
realistic approach, and adequate preparation, and was set up in
three parts. The first part of the questionnaire required the respondent
to indicate demographic information, to give reasons for
selecting a retail career, to evaluate major preparation, and to
objectively rate her job satisfaction. The second part of the questionnaire
measured preparation and realistic approach to retailing,
and the third part consisted of 81 situations designed to yield a satisfaction
score.
Four hundred and ninety questionnaires were sent to twenty-three personnel directors in department and departmentalized
speciality stores in the western states with a request that these
personnel directors distribute the questionnaires to their executive
trainees. Eight personnel directors indicated that they had distributed
the questionnaires to their trainees and requested copies
of the results of this study. Ten replied that they did not wish their trainees to cooperate in the study and 164 incompleted questionnaires
were returned by them. Five personnel directors did not
reply to the author's letter asking for cooperation. Of the 326
questionnaires possibly distributed to trainees, 120 were returned
by young women in junior executive positions. Fifty-eight of the
120 were discarded as unusable, leaving 62 returns composed of
25 Home Economics majors and 37 non-majors. This was a 19
percent return of the total number of questionnaires which could
have been received by trainees.
The returned questionnaires were analyzed with the use of
several statistical techniques. A mean satisfaction score for each
respondent was determined on the basis of responses to the 81 situations
in Part C. The Student's t-test was then used to test for differences
between the average of the Home Economics majors'
scores and the average of the non-majors' scores. Respondents
were classified by age, length of service, age at decision of occupation,
and location of college attended, and multiple range tests
were used to test for differences in job satisfaction between respondents
checking the various classifications.
Frequency counts were made of the reasons each respondent
indicated for selecting a retail career. Frequency counts were
also made of each respondent's evaluation of certain clothing, textiles,
and related course areas. The Student's t-test was used to test for differences in the realistic approach, as well as to
determine the difference in preparation, between the two groups.
The four questions designed to measure realistic approach were
also analyzed independently with the use of the chi-square test for
independence to determine if there was a significant difference between
the realistic approach of the two groups based on the individual
questions. Means for all respondents, means for Home Economics
majors, and means for non-majors were determined for
each of the 81 situations measuring job satisfaction to identify situations
with which respondents in each of these groups were satisfied
or dissatisfied. These situations were arranged in order from
high satisfaction to low satisfaction for all respondents and listed
in Appendix C. Also included in Appendix C are the differences
between the major means and non-major, means for each of the 81
situations. The relationship between respondents' objective ratings
of satisfaction and their subjective satisfaction scores are displayed
in a two-way contingency table to show the distribution of
frequency of occurrence of the subjective and objective measurements.
The data collected from the questionnaire revealed that the
mean satisfaction scores of majors and non-majors differed, and
non-majors were significantly more satisfied than majors in retail
junior executive training. Majors were more satisfied than non-majors with some situations and dissatisfied with others. The
recommendation was made that these situations be presented to
Home Economics majors planning to enter retail careers in order
that they might more fully realize how these situations in their
future work will affect them personally.
Non-majors were also significantly more realistic than majors
in, their approach to retailing. Majors felt significantly more
adequately prepared than non-majors in clothing, textiles, and related
course areas, but a few areas of inadequacy in Home Economics
college preparation were noted for the majors. Generally, it
appeared that Home Economics majors feel their college major is
useful in their retail work, and a greater percentage of the majors
than the non-majors would again select the same college curriculum
if given the opportunity to choose again.
Reasons for selecting retail careers were similar for the two
groups and an interest in clothing was the reason most frequently
indicated by both groups. It was concluded that Home Economics
majors in this study may experience less satisfaction in retail
careers than non-majors because of a lack of a realistic approach,
and that future research should be conducted to determine what
causes this dissatisfaction, and how it may be alleviated.
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| Additional Information |
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Previous issue date: 1965-08-11
- description.provenance : Rejected by Patricia Black(patricia.black@oregonstate.edu), reason: Replace
on 2014-04-25T18:38:22Z (GMT)
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