A calm and happy keeper of the keys

Criminal Justice-Corrections

Vast literature has been written about the factors contributing to job stress and job satisfaction. Of these, not much has explored the effects of ACA (American Correctional Association) views, relations with coworkers, and institutional policy views. In this study, Paoline, Lambert, & Hogan (2006) aimed to further the understanding of job-related stress and satisfaction by examining the afore-mentioned work environment factors.

The authors hypothesized that among correctional workers, positive views of the ACA standards, positive relations with coworkers, and a clear and consistently enforced institutional policy has a direct association on job satisfaction; and conversely, an inverse association on job stress. They also posited that the impacts of these three work environment factors are greater than that of personal characteristics of correctional workers.

For this study, independent variables are as follows: ACA views, relations with coworkers, and institutional policy views. Also included are seven measures of personal characteristics - race, education, age, gender, supervisory status, position, tenure - which serve as control variables. The dependent variables are job stress and job satisfaction.

Purposive sampling was utilized for both the focus group discussions and survey. A series of focus groups was conducted among Orange County Corrections Department (OCCD) employees to better understand their work environment. This was completed within ten days, among seven groups of a total forty-eight OCCD employees from different organizational levels. Inputs from the focus groups were incorporated in the questionnaire, which was voluntarily accomplished by 1,062 out of the approximately 1,500 OCCD employees. Participation in the survey merited the employee 2 hours of overtime. The statistical methods employed to analyze the data include multivariate analysis, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression equations, and Pearson's r correlation.

All of the authors' hypotheses have been supported. Results of this study suggest that positive view of the ACA standards has a negative impact on job stress and a positive impact on job satisfaction. The same holds true with positive relations with coworkers and clear and consistently enforced institutional policies. Furthermore, results show that the impacts of these three are superior to that of personal characteristics of correctional workers.