SOCI332_Final Project Assignment Worksheet_FIsher

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SOCI332 Assignment: Final Project - Guide to Completing the Research Study Complete the following assignment by filling in all requested information. You will need to utilize SPSS and the GSS dataset provided in class to complete it. Information should be based on the variables you chose and analyzed in Weeks 1-6. Use a different, but legible, color font for your responses. This assignment is intended to help you complete the writing of a quantitative research article, with particular emphasis on the Findings and Conclusion sections. The assignment is to be completed and submitted no later than the Sunday of Week 7 by 11:55pm ET. It is worth 100 points. (A) Introduction: Write an introduction to your research study in 1-2 paragraphs. Be sure to include a brief statement of current research on your topic (with an in-text citation of a source), a description of your research topic, why you chose the topic, what you hoped to learn from the topic, your research question, and your broad hypothesis. The saying that money doesn’t buy happiness has been around for decades. Many will agree, but there are some who feel the statement is incorrect. Some feel that without money, they cannot live a good life, while others feel that money is the root of all evil. Could this also be true when it comes to income and job satisfaction? The more money one makes at a job, will that increase how satisfied they are with that job or vice versus. According to resources for employers, money cannot buy happiness at work (Pantelakis). Higher salaries are often thought to provide happiness at work, but studies have challenged this statement. Higher salaries can often bring on much more workload, causing higher levels of work stress. I am conducting research to determine whether a person's income level has an impact on their job satisfaction. I chose this topic because there are times when I feel that I am not being fairly compensated for the amount of work I do, which can affect my overall job satisfaction. I want to find out if other people feel the same way, or if higher income levels result in greater job satisfaction. Ultimately, I hope to determine whether income level is a significant factor in determining job satisfaction. My hypothesis is that earning a higher salary results in greater job satisfaction than earning a lower salary for the same job and my research question is does the level of income affect job satisfaction?

(B) Literature Review: Write a 3-5 paragraph lit review (review of studies on your topic) using more than three sources, at least two of them being research studies in peer-reviewed journal articles. As I was conducting my research, I noticed that my topic was quite popular among other researchers. All of them seemed to be interested in examining whether income was linked to job satisfaction. Interestingly, I stumbled upon one study that explored the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance, rather than income. I found this study particularly intriguing as it could be an excellent addition to my topic. Research has shown that there is a strong correlation between job satisfaction and job performance. It suggests that when employees are happy and content with their jobs, they tend to perform better at work, which can lead to improved productivity and job outcomes (Davar & RanjuBala, 2012). The researchers conducted a meta- analysis to combine the results of various studies that investigated the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. Their findings suggest that there is only a weak correlation between the two variables. This could be an interesting study to examine the direct relationship between job satisfaction, job performance, and income. The next study that I took a look at was another meta-analysis but this pertained to my topic of income and job satisfaction. This study used meta-analysis to estimate the correlation between pay and job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2010). Their study revealed that contrary to popular belief, there was only a minor correlation between income and job satisfaction. Initially, the researchers assumed that most people work primarily for financial reasons. It was found in a qualitative review that higher pay levels strongly predict job satisfaction (Heneman, 1988). It's important to note that even though a study was conducted years ago, the current scenario may not be the same. Another study revealed that employees are not only interested in their salary but also in how their income compares to the compensation levels of their peers in the workplace (Brown et al., 2008). It solely depends on who is being interviewed for these surveys, resulting in a wide range of responses. I have reviewed multiple studies on the topic of income affecting job satisfaction, and I found that it varies among different jobs, workers, and other factors. Ultimately, it depends on who is being interviewed and the type of job they are doing. However, it's important to note that money cannot buy happiness. Lots of times, jobs with higher compensation come with more stress. Self-employed individuals are generally happier than those employed by corporations or other businesses. (Pantelakis). (C) Methods/Dataset: In one paragraph, describe the GSS dataset. Since 1972, the General Social Survey (GSS) has been conducting surveys of American adults to monitor and explain trends in opinions, attitudes, and behaviors (NORC, 2021). For this research project, the 2018 GSS dataset was used. This dataset consisted of individuals who speak English or Spanish. The data was collected via telephone or in-person interviews. All these individuals were not institutionalized, and various questions were asked. The survey consisted of 2,348 people being interviewed (NORC, 2021).

(D) Methods/Variables: In one paragraph, discuss why you chose the specific independent and dependent variables for your analyses. Include the names of the variables, the level of measurement, the questions asked in the survey, and the response choices for each. The specific variables that I used in my research were real income in constant $ (REALINC) for the independent variable and job satisfaction in general (JOBSAT) for the dependent variable. I did end up re- coding the independent variable to reduce the number of categories and make the outputs less spread out. The level of measurement for real income in constant $ was interval/ratio but after the recode it changed to nominal. The level of measurement for job satisfaction in general was nominal. I chose these two variables because they seemed to fit what I needed to complete my research on how income level affects job satisfaction. For real income in constant $, the question that was asked was the respondent's income at the time of the survey. There were not any response choices for respondent's income. They just responded with how much money they made. For job satisfaction in general, the question was, all in all, how satisfied would you say you are with your job? The response choices were as follows, inapplicable, no answer, do not know/cannot choose, very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, not too satisfied, and not at all satisfied. (E) Methods/Variable information: Copy and paste your frequency tables and descriptive statistics for each variable. Include your charts as well (histogram, bar, or pie). Provide a summary/explanation of what these tables/charts tell us about your variables: Frequencies Frequency Table

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Bar Chart

These tables and charts tell me a good deal about my variables. They told me what the most common responses from the respondents were. Regarding job satisfaction, most respondents were very satisfied with their jobs. Regarding income, the most common income was $24,430. I also am able to see how many respondents there were to each survey and their answers. (F) Findings: Copy & Paste corrected analyses from Weeks 3-6, i.e., Crosstabs, Measures of Association, Tests of Significance. Include the five steps of hypothesis testing. Crosstabs

Five Steps of Hypothesis Testing 1. H 0 : Income level DOES NOT affect job satisfaction. H 1 : Income level DOES affect job satisfaction.

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2. The significance level (alpha) for my study is 0.5. 3. SPSS Output 4. p Value: .016

5. The Value is less than the alpha .05, therefore the null hypothesis will be rejected. The study shows a significant correlation between income level and job satisfaction, meaning that persons with higher levels of income are more satisfied with their jobs. (G) Findings: Explain what the analyses displayed above tell us about the relationships between the variables in the study. The analysis above tells us that there is a significant correlation between income level and job satisfaction. This determines that people with higher levels of income are more satisfied with their jobs than people with lower incomes. These tests confirm that there is a relationship between the variables and it is statistically significant and worth looking at further. (H) Conclusions: Explain how the findings contribute to the study of your topic. What did you learn? What other variables need to be explored? What further research on your topic could be pursued in the future? The findings of the study indicate a significant correlation between income and job satisfaction. In addition to income, other variables such as employment status (self-employment, large corporation or small business), and the number of working hours could also be explored to determine their impact on job satisfaction. There are numerous other variables that could be considered to gain a better understanding of the factors that contribute to job satisfaction. This topic would be a good topic to do further research on using multiple variables and seeing the outcomes using these variables.

References: Include full APA citations of all sources used. List them in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. Use hanging indentation (Line spacing options – Indention – Special – Hanging). Don’t forget to cite the GSS dataset (citation is listed in Week 1 Lessons). Brown, G. D., Gardner, J., Oswald, A. J., & Qian, J. (2008). Does Wage Rank Affect Employees' Well- being? Industrial Relations , 47 (3), 355-389. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-232X.2008.00525.x Davar, S. C., & Ranju Bala. (2012). Relationship between Job Satisfaction & Job Performance: a Meta- analysis. Indian Journal of Industrial Relations , 48 (2), 290–305. Heneman, R. L., Greenberger, D. B., & Strasser, S. (1988). The relationship between pay-for-performance perceptions and pay satisfaction. Personnel Psychology, 41 (4), 745– 759. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1988.tb00651.x Judge, T. A., Piccolo, R. F., Podsakoff, N. P., Shaw, J. C., & Rich, B. L. (2010). The relationship between pay and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis of the literature. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 77 (2), 157– 167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2010.04.002 NORC at the University of Chicago (2021). About the GSS . The General Social Survey. Retrieved November 17, 2023, from https://gss.norc.org/About-The-GSS Pantelakis, A. (n.d.). Why money alone can't buy happiness at work . Workable. Retrieved November 17, 2023, from https://resources.workable.com/stories-and-insights/salary-and-job- satisfaction#:~:text=Higher%20salary%20may%20not%20offset,work%20contribute%20to %20job%20satisfaction . Smith, Tom W., Davern, Michael, Freese, Jeremy, and Morgan, Stephen, General Social Surveys, 1972- 2018 [machine-readable data file] /Principal Investigator, Smith, Tom W.; Co-Principal Investigators, Michael Davern, Jeremy Freese, and Stephen Morgan; Sponsored by National Science Foundation. --NORC ed.-- Chicago: NORC, 2018: NORC at the University of Chicago [producer and distributor]. Data accessed from the GSS Data Explorer website at gssdataexplorer.norc.org.

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