A Meta-Analysis of Job Satisfaction Correlates in the Public Administration Literature

• Author: Paola Cantarelli,Paolo Belardinelli,Nicola Belle
• Date: 01 June 2016
• DOI: 10.1177/0734371X15578534
• Published date: 01 June 2016
• Subject Matter: Articles

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2016, Vol. 36(2) 115 –144

© The Author(s) 2015

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X15578534

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Article

A Meta-Analysis of Job

Satisfaction Correlates in

the Public Administration

Literature

Paola Cantarelli1, Paolo Belardinelli2, and Nicola Belle2

Abstract

What can we learn by applying a meta-analysis to the public administration

literature on job satisfaction? More generally, how can public management scholars

use this method to capitalize on the decades of research on other topics within

our field? This study reports the findings of the first quantitative review of the

public administration literature on job satisfaction. We retrieved quantitative data

from primary studies published in 42 public administration journals since 1969 and

performed a meta-analysis of the relationships between job satisfaction and 43

correlates. The findings include meta-analytically derived effect sizes, measures

of the heterogeneity in the effect size underlying all primary studies, and several

indicators of publication bias. In presenting the results of our meta-analysis, we

address the merits and limitations of this methodology and discuss how public

administration scholars could take full advantage of this information to advance

knowledge in other areas within the field.

Keywords

meta-analysis, job satisfaction, job satisfaction correlates in the public sector

Introduction

What can we learn by applying a meta-analysis to the public administration literature

on job satisfaction? More generally, should public management scholars use this

1The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA

2Bocconi University, Milan, Italy

Corresponding Author:

Paola Cantarelli, School of Economic, Political & Policy Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, 800

West Campbell Road, GR31, Richardson, TX 75080-3021, USA.

Email: cantarelli@utdallas.edu

578534ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X15578534Review of Public Personnel AdministrationCantarelli et al.

research-article2015

116 Review of Public Personnel Administration 36(2)

method more often to capitalize on the decades of research on other topics within the

field?

According to Rainey (2009), “Thousands of studies and dozens of different ques-

tionnaire measures have made job satisfaction one of the most intensively studied

variables in organizational research, if not the most studied” (p. 298). In addition, in

the public administration literature, job satisfaction has drawn scholarship more often

than most other concepts. As of October 2014, a search of the 42 peer-reviewed

English-language public administration journals listed in the 2013 Institute for

Scientific Information (ISI) Journal Citation Reports (© Thomson Reuters) returned

249 articles that contain the words job satisfaction, work satisfaction, or employee

satisfaction either in the title or in the abstract. Considering the large number of studies

on job satisfaction published in public administration journals, with the oldest dating

back to 1969 (Heclo, 1969), the time seems ripe for summarizing what has been

learned and what remains to be understood. Over the last few years, meta-analysis has

become the methodology of choice to perform quantitative comprehensive reviews in

the social sciences. As of October 2014, a Google search of the term meta-analysis

leads to approximately 1,170,000 results. It led approximately 522,000 entries in 2004

and approximately 2,500 in 1999 (Hunter & Schmidt, 2004). As of October 2014, a

search of the term meta-analysis in the abstract on the PsycINFO database leads to

15,409 results published since 1978, with 6,962 since 2010; 5,923 between 2000 and

2009; and 1,879 between 1990 and 1999. For no apparent reason, public administra-

tion scholars seem to lag behind in the use of this statistical method (e.g., Groeneveld,

Tummers, Bronkhorst, Ashikali, & Van Thiel, 2015; J. L. Perry, 2012). A search of the

term meta-analysis in the abstract or title of the articles in public administration jour-

nals generated only approximately 20 results.

The present study takes up the call of J. L. Perry’s (2012) “to turn to meta-analysis

more routinely as a tool for cumulating and assessing what we know about the research

questions we study” (p. 481). Thus, it performs a meta-analysis on studies that (a) are

published in the public administration journals listed by the 2013 ISI Journal Citation

Reports (© Thomson Reuters), (b) use a quantitative research design, (c) report infor-

mation about sample size and the zero-ordered bivariate correlation between job satis-

faction and another variable, and (d) test their hypotheses on samples of civil servants.

In fact, despite 45 years of public administration research on job satisfaction and 24

years of rapid growth of meta-analysis as a research method, no systematic efforts

have been made to systematize what we know about the correlates of job satisfaction

in the public sector.

The present research contributes to the existing literature in two primary ways. The

first contribution is of a substantive nature. In a time when governments across the

globe are struggling with plans to cut back on personnel, public organizations and their

managers must enhance the productivity of their remaining employees to ensure that

essential services are adequately provided. Making public workers satisfied with and

committed to their jobs is one of the preconditions of reaching this goal. Therefore, it

appears timely and relevant to understand whether and how different variables have

been shown to relate with job satisfaction in previous investigations. The present study