Correctional Facilities and Job Performance

Job Satisfaction in Correctional Officers Current Situation One of the enduring problems in modern law enforcement is the high rate of job dissatisfaction among correctional officers, which, anecdotally is even higher than job dissatisfaction rates in other law enforcement professionals. There are a number of factors believed to contribute to this job dissatisfaction, which, in turn, contributes to other problems for correctional facilities, such as high rates of employee turnover.

Job dissatisfaction can also increase danger in the correctional facility environment because it might impact prisoner morale, may result in correctional officers not being sufficiently attentive to changes in prisoner attitude, and may make it difficult to keep staff adequately trained to respond to situations that develop within the correctional environment. Obviously, all of these scenarios can result in an increased negative impact on job satisfaction for other employees, so that the problem becomes cyclical.

What that suggests is that employee satisfaction will vary by correctional institute, and that high rates of employee job dissatisfaction are likely to result in job dissatisfaction in new employees. In order to determine whether this is true, it is important to investigate the correlation between job satisfaction levels when a new hire begins working at a correctional institution and that new hire's own self-reported job satisfaction after the end of a traditional probationary work period.

If there is the anticipated correlation between prevailing job satisfaction rates and new hires' self-reported job satisfaction rates, then it seems clear that job satisfaction is not simply about changing working conditions but also about changing employee perceptions of those working conditions. Therefore, it seems likely that fixing the level of job dissatisfaction in a correctional institution is not as simple as replacing staff members; instead, there has to be an effort to change all employee attitudes.

Problem Statement Is the level of general employee self-reported satisfaction or dissatisfaction at the time that a new-hire is employed an accurate predictor of that newly hired employee's self-reported job satisfaction or dissatisfaction three months after the employee has been hired? Research Objective To determine whether the prevailing rates of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction at a correctional institution at the time that a new hire joins a company have an impact on the new hire's own self-reported job satisfaction.

Research Questions What is the prevailing rate of job satisfaction at the time that a new hire begins his or her tenure at a correctional facility? Do job satisfaction rates vary according to job type or does job satisfaction seem fairly consistent across the facility? What is the new hire's self-reported job satisfaction after three months of employment? Hypotheses The prevailing rates of job satisfaction in a correctional institution will be predictive of a new hire's self-reported job satisfaction after three months in a new job in a correctional facility.

Part Two: Literature Review Introduction For those unfamiliar with correctional facilities, the idea that living conditions for inmates are actually a very important consideration may come as a surprise. However, while inmates may live in conditions that any person outside of a correctional facility would find burdensome, living conditions are a serious consideration for the employees and administrators who handle the day-to-day operations in those correctional facilities.

They must ensure that prisoners live in environments that are as safe as possible, not only to ensure safe conditions for the inmates, but also for the employees. Many of the factors that impact living conditions are beyond the control of correctional facility employees and administrators, such as prison overcrowding or lack of funding. However, employee satisfaction is one factor over which administrators can exercise some control.

Employee satisfaction is important in a correctional facility because low rates of employee satisfaction can have a very negative impact on living conditions for prisoners. Correctional facility employees who are unhappy in their jobs may contribute to high employee turnover rates, increase the risk of prisoner abuse, make it less likely that employees will notice dangerous conditions in the facility, and otherwise compromise the living conditions in the facility.

The result is that high employee job dissatisfaction could actually lead to dangerous conditions inside the correctional facilities, not only compromising job satisfaction but also putting correctional officers, inmates, and ultimately the public at risk. The goal of the research project will be to examine different things that impact job satisfaction at correctional facilities. One of the most significant burdens that administrators face in the correctional environment is a consistent and pervasive lack of adequate funding.

The lack of funding not only leads to overcrowded prison conditions and lack of resources for prisoners, but can also lead to inadequate resources for staff. Correctional facilities may be understaffed or staff in correctional facilities may be underpaid, so that rather than recruiting and retaining criminal justice professionals, the correctional facilities end up with workforces composed primarily of people who do not have a long-term interest in criminal justice.

Therefore, this literature review will examine what type of conditions are linked to lower job satisfaction in the correctional facility environment. Body One of the factors linked to employee job dissatisfaction is a high rate of employee turnover. While employee dissatisfaction is not the only cause of job turnover, the reality is that employees who are highly satisfied in all aspects of their jobs are not going to be seeking alternate employment. Graham et al.

conducted an exploratory study to examine the reasons for correctional officer turnover at the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) (2007). They discovered that job satisfaction did play a critical role in helping determine job turnover rates. Moreover, they also discovered that organizational commitment helped predict turnover trends. Furthermore, they broke down job satisfaction into several different components: recognition, compensation, salaries, advancement, creativity, responsibility, moral values, and achievement. In fact, job satisfaction is a complex idea, so much so that job satisfaction can be measured in familiar psychological terms.

Udechukwu examined job satisfaction in terms of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Herzberg's Motivation Theory (2009). Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggests an importance of needs that begins with physiological needs, and then moves up through safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory is a two-factor motivational theory that considers those factors contributing to job satisfaction as motivators and those contributing to job dissatisfaction as hygiene factors. The factors leading to job dissatisfaction are: company policies, supervision, relationship with bosses, work conditions, salaries, and relationships with peers.

The factors leading to job dissatisfaction are: achievement, recognition, work itself, responsibility, advancement, and growth (Udechukwu, 2009). What this research suggests is that some factors that may maintain job satisfaction, such as salaries, are not sufficient to make employees report feeling satisfied at their jobs. Instead, they are simply things that do not make people unhappy at their jobs. Furthermore, when examining Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the need for safety is clearly an important need.

It is one that is at risk in the correctional facility environment, therefore, it seems clear that if the correctional facility cannot guarantee a minimum level of safety for the correctional facility workers, then there is going to be a decline in job satisfaction. This safety, which would be a work condition, is something that can contribute to work dissatisfaction, therefore it could be considered a workplace stressor Of course, workplace danger is not the workplace stressor in the correctional facility environment. Lambert et al.

examined how the workplace environment in the correctional facility would impact workplace commitment (2012). Furthermore, these workplace stressors were further delineated into categories based on how they related to organizational commitment, with continuance, moral, and affective variables. By administering surveys to 272 staff at a Midwestern maximum-security state prison, the researchers looked at the association between various occupational stressors: perceived dangerousness of the job, role conflict, role ambiguity, repetitiveness, and work-on-family conflict with the three forms of organizational commitment (Lambert et al., 2012).

What they found is that the impact of the stressors differed when viewed through the lens of different types of organizational commitment. Slate et al. examined at employees from a private, minimum-security correctional institute by using a questionnaire to ask the employees about the influence of occupational and physical stress on those officers, management practices, and different demographic variables, and those related to the officer's thoughts about quitting their jobs.

The findings suggested consistency across time in why people would choose to leave their jobs, with organizational stress being the greatest predictor of job turnover. In contrast, employees who felt that they were involved in the decision-making of the institution were less-likely to report a desire to quit their jobs (Slate et al., 2001). However, one factor that may have impacted the validity of the study was that less than half of the employees responded to the survey.

Given that the subject of the survey was about job satisfaction, there is a possibility that survey responses may have been skewed positive or negative. Thomas examined various aspects of the correctional facility employment process that might be impacted by on-the-job trauma, even that type of trauma best characterized as vicarious trauma and/or secondary stress (2012).

The different factors that he examined included: job satisfaction, number of hours in direct contact with inmates, personal support, organizational support, level of perceived job related danger, number of violent incidents observed, and number of times personally assaulted by an inmate. What they found was that certain job-related and non-job related factors made officers more vulnerable to vicarious trauma and secondary traumatic stress, and that these factors went beyond the officer's likelihood of exposure to traumatic incidents.

Conclusion Examining the literature, one of the most pervasive trends is a link between safety and/or exposure to risk and job satisfaction for correctional officers. This comes as no surprise; when people feel safe, they feel more satisfied. In fact, when examined from the perspective of Maslow's Need's Hierarchy, one would anticipate that correctional officers who do not feel safe in their working environments would not be able to access any other potentially positive benefits that are available in those same working environments.

Moreover, given the theoretical impact that job dissatisfaction has on safety in the correctional facility setting, it seems likely that this problem is self-perpetuating. In other words, not only are officers in dangerous correctional facilities more likely to report low job satisfaction, but officers who are dissatisfied with their jobs probably also contribute to correctional facilities that are not as safe for prisoners or for their fellow officers.

Part Three Introduction The purpose of this questionnaire is to examine whether the prevailing job-satisfaction rate at a correctional facility when a new hire joins is correlated with the new hire's self-reported job satisfaction three months after being hired. In order to assess job satisfaction, existing employees will be issued the questionnaire at the time that a new class of recruits is hired, and those recruits will be give the survey three months after being hired.

The older employees will not be retested when the new recruits are tested after their 90-day probationary period expires and they are considered full time employees. Time Frame The questionnaire is sufficiently brief for survey respondents to take it within 30 minutes or less time, and the staff at the correctional facility are already involved in mandatory meetings on a weekly basis, which provide an opportunity for testing. The survey would be administered just prior to a group of new recruits beginning work at the correctional facility.

It would then be administered to those recruits three months after they begin working at the correctional facility. Statement on Confidentiality Because these surveys are a mandatory part of employee meetings, there may be some concern about confidentiality. The surveys are being completed, on computers supplied by the researcher, on a web-site that will not have access to any employee data.

The researcher will not have information about the time each survey was completed, but will get all survey results "blind," making it impossible for the researcher to link survey results to any particular respondent, and giving survey participants the highest degree of confidentiality possible in a research project of this type. Questions and Evaluations 1.

On a scale of 1 to 5, how satisfied are you at this job? 1 2 3 4 5 Very Somewhat Neutral Some Issues Unhappy This question uses a traditional Likert scale to measure an employee's own perceptions of job satisfaction and is the survey's most basic question about employee perceptions of job satisfaction. 2. On a scale of 1 to 5, how likely are you to look for other employment in the next six months? 1 2 3 4 5 Very Somewhat Neutral Possible Not at all This question uses a Likert scale to measure an employee's likelihood to seek other employment.

Job satisfaction is correlated with the desire to look for another job, though other factors, such as the economy and job market, can also play a critical role in that process. Because employee turnover is one of the issues the researcher believes can contribute to safety issues in correctional facilities, this question may be critical. 3.

Do employees at your level get to participate in the policy-making process? Yes/No This is a yes or no question that asks for the respondent's perception of whether employees at their level get to participate in the policy-making process. Rather than using a Likert approach, the question asks for a simple yes/no response to determine employee perceptions about the level of employee participation in policy making. 4.

On average, how many violent incidents, per week, occur in the correctional facility? This question is a fill in the blank response and requires the respondent to provide an estimate of the level of violence in the facility. Because violent incidents are reported, the researcher can compare responses with the actual numbers. 5.

Is your employer taking adequate steps to keep you as safe as possible, given that you are working in a correctional facility? Yes/No This yes or no question asks the respondent to assess whether the employer is protecting safety, but also recognizes that correctional facilities do have inherent dangers. 6. Do you feel like there is an employee morale problem at your workplace? Yes/No This question is aimed at determining employee perceptions about morale in the workplace. 7.

Do you feel like you are paid adequately for the job that you do? Yes/No While increasing pay may not necessarily increase job satisfaction, employees who feel like they are underpaid tend to report greater levels of job dissatisfaction. 8. Do you feel like you have opportunities for advancement in your current job? Yes/No This question is meant to assess whether respondents feel as if they are in "dead-end" jobs. 9.

Do you feel like you had adequate training to do your job? Yes / No This question is just to determine whether the respondents feel as if they have sufficient training to do their jobs. 10.

What type of resources are available to help you do your job properly? This is an open-ended question to determine what the employees perceive as the resources that they have available to help them accomplish job tasks, and is aimed at determining not only what resources the respondents list, but also the number and variety of resources that they name.

Part Four Research Objective To determine whether the prevailing rates of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction at a correctional institution at the time that a new hire joins a company have an impact on the new hire's own self-reported job satisfaction.

Description of Population The broad population is the population of correctional facility officers, however, because there is tremendous variation in the responsibilities and working conditions for correctional officers depending on their locations, the type of facility, and other factors, no facility would be generalizable to the overall population of correctional officers.

Therefore, this test would be administered to all officers in a single correctional facility, at two times, ideally covering the entire staff, though it is possible that some of the correctional officers would not be included in the study because of workplace absences. Sampling Procedures Because the surveys would be administered to two entire groups in the population, there would be no sampling procedure aimed at getting a smaller selection from the larger group. First, the group of all correctional officers would receive the surveys.

Second, the group of new hires who had been there for three months would receive the surveys. Sample Size The sample size would be 100% of the sample unless officers missed the mandatory meetings, which would impact the sample size by the percentage of officers who missed the mandatory meetings where they would have been asked to fill out the survey.

Confidence Interval Because the intent is to survey the entire population, the confidence interval estimates are not relevant; there is no margin of error in the results because the survey respondents will not reflect a portion of the study's population, they will reflect the study's entire population. Without a margin of error, it is impossible to determine a confidence interval.

Part Five Objective To determine the relationship between prevailing job satisfaction at the time an employee is hired and new-hire job satisfaction three months after being hired by comparing employee survey results from a group of existing correctional officers employed at the time that new recruits begin their jobs and those same new recruits after they complete a three-month probationary period.

Quasi-Experiment This is a quasi-experiment rather than an experiment because employee job satisfaction will not be the only variable that could impact new-hire job satisfaction and the researcher will not be manipulating any variables. In a true experiment, the researcher has control over all of the variables and can isolate a single variable in order to determine cause and effect and not simply correlation.

Hypothesis The prevailing rates of job satisfaction in a correctional institution will be predictive of a new hire's self-reported job satisfaction after three months in a new job in a correctional facility. If existing correctional officers are unhappy in their jobs when a new hire begins working, that new hire will be more likely to self-report a high rate of job dissatisfaction after three months on the job.

In contrast, if existing correctional officers are happy in their jobs when a new hire begins working, that new hire will be more likely to self-report a high rate of job satisfaction after three months on the job. Variables The independent variable is the prevailing rate of job satisfaction at the time the new hire is employed; the dependent variable is the new hire's job satisfaction three months after being hired; the extraneous variables are those variables that might impact both factors such as the dangerousness of the facility.

There are no blocking variables employed in this design although the experimenter does not have complete control over the different variables that could impact the outcome of the quasi-experiment and could have an impact on the new hires' self-reports of job satisfaction rates. Validity The biggest question about validity for this research has to do with whether the survey in question accurately measures job satisfaction.

However, it is treated as a self-report of job-satisfaction and assesses factors that have broad support in the relevant literature for being linked to employee job satisfaction. Because there are interrelationships between potential confounding variables and job satisfaction for existing employees and new hires, the experiment's internal validity will, by design, remain at issue. Part Six The survey uses a variety of different scales to assess responses, depending on the question type and the number of available answers for each of the questions.

It takes a multi-faceted approach because different approaches can often elicit more nuanced answers to questions that seem very similar, which can help affirm the internal reliability of the survey document. These scales include: the Likert scale, dichotomous responses, open ended questions calling for numeric responses which are ordinal in nature, and, finally, open ended responses whose answers must then be coded or scaled.

The use of different scales means that each question almost works as its own unique research project, because the coding for the individual question is unique from the coding for similar questions that have a different range of answers and can make it difficult to use those questions as a way to help establish internal validity or reliability However, it can also make it very difficult to compare how respondents feel across different questions because the response scales are different.

In addition, the choice of scale can impact how people answer the question, because some response choices will be more likely to force respondents into positive or negative answers, while others are geared towards allowing respondents the freedom to indicate some positive and some negative feelings simultaneously. In fact, attitude can be critically important for answering questions, because if a question invokes the wrong attitude it can appear overly invasive to respondents.

Question one uses a traditional Likert scale to measure an employee's own perceptions of job satisfaction and is the survey's most basic question about employee perceptions of job satisfaction. Question two also uses a Likert scale to measure an employee's likelihood to seek other employment. Question three is a dichotomous question that uses a yes or no question that asks for the respondent's perception of whether employees at their level get to participate in the policy-making process.

Rather than using a Likert approach, the question asks for a simple yes/no response to determine employee perceptions about the level of employee participation in policy making. Question four does not use a forced-choice response or limit the respondent's ability to respond in any way. Instead, this question is a fill in the blank response and requires the respondent to provide an estimate of the level of violence in the facility. Because violent incidents are reported, the researcher can compare responses with the actual numbers.

Question five is a yes or no dichotomous question. Question six is a yes or no dichotomous question. Question seven is a yes/no dichotomous question. Question eight is a yes/no dichotomous question. Question nine is a yes/no dichotomous question. Question ten is an open-ended question that asks employees what they perceive as the resources that they have available to help them accomplish job tasks. One of the most basic types of scales used in social research is the Likert scale.

The Likert scale is used to measure attitudes by asking people to report their level of agreement or disagreement with a statement. By definition it measures a single topic because it asks for the opinion on a specific topic. Likert scales are fixed choice responses and are considered ordinal scales.

One of the potential weaknesses of a Likert scale is that it assumes that the strength or intensity of an experience is linear, on a continuum from strongly agree to strongly disagree or other similar choices, and makes an assumption that the difference between strong agree and agree is the same as the difference between an agree and neutral response. Therefore, the Likert scale hopes to measure the strength/intensity of a response. Likert scales offer respondents an odd number of responses, with the center choice being neutral.

Dichotomous questions have only two possible responses and may be the most simple format for a survey question. Dichotomous questions can present several different answer choice pairs, but the ones used throughout the survey questions described above are Yes/No answer choices. This requires the respondent to either give a positive or a negative response to the question that is being asked. There are also two questions included in the survey that give the respondents a greater level of freedom.

The first one asks the respondents to indicate a number of incidents that occurred. This may appear, at first blush, to be an open-ended response question. However, a question asking for a numerical response is inherently limiting. It could be described as an ordinal question because it asks the respondents for a numeric response. This numeric response can easily be compared for the different respondents.

Another question asks the respondent to list things that the employer could do to improve a scenario; this is an open-ended question that might result in responses that the researcher did not anticipate and could not quantify prior to the research. Generally, when one attempts to quantify open-ended questions, there is pre-survey coding of a list of potential responses, which must be very specific and comprehensive.

Of course, even the most comprehensive and specific coding list might not include some words and phrases that people associate with certain positive or negative affective states. A composite scale would combine the items to measure a concept that is too complex to be measured by a single item. A summated scale is a collection of related questions measuring underlying constructs.

The different items examined in the survey are all questions aimed at trying to determine the respondent's job satisfaction, which is a measure that may be too complex to be identified by a single item. This is because someone may be satisfied with some areas of a job, but not with other areas of a job. The questions in this survey would best be described as a composite scale. The questions are all aimed at.