Role pressures, personality characteristics and extent of job satisfaction of the district superintendent in Newfoundland

King, Frank Jerome (1972) Role pressures, personality characteristics and extent of job satisfaction of the district superintendent in Newfoundland. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the job satisfaction of district superintendents in Newfoundland in relation to the role pressures to which they were exposed and in relation to selected personality characteristics. Nine hypotheses were developed for the study. -- Expectations for the superintendency role were collected from board members, business managers, principals and superintendents. A standardized personality test and a job satisfaction questionnaire were also administered to each superintendent. These instruments provided the information used in the testing of the various hypotheses. -- Items for the role questionnaire were classified under five task areas: (l) Superintendent-School Board Relations; (2) Improving Educational Opportunity; (3) Obtaining and Developing Personnel; (4) Providing and Maintaining Funds and Facilities; and (5) Maintaining Effective Community Relations. The subjects were asked to indicate the degree to which they expected the superintendent to assume responsibility for each item. -- For each of the twenty superintendents studied, expectations were recorded from six role senders--two board members, the board's business manager and three principals. The responses of a particular superintendent were then compared with the expectations of his role senders and indexes of role pressure were computed from the response discrepancies. -- Job satisfaction was expressed as a cumulative score over the 46 items on the questionnaire. Superintendents were asked to indicate their feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with various aspects of their present position. -- One-way analysis of variance was used in testing the first six hypotheses while the final three necessitated the use of two-way analysis of variance. No significant differences were established in the expressed job satisfaction of superintendents in relation to the degree of total role pressure or in relation to the degree of role pressure from subordinates. Superordinate pressure was directly and significantly related to the superintendents' job satisfaction--i.e., higher pressure correlated with higher satisfaction. -- The findings also revealed that anxiety level, introversion/extraversion and subduedness/independence did not exert a significant influence on the job satisfaction experienced by the position incumbents. The postulated interactions between level of role pressure and these personality factors were not supported. -- It was concluded that the job satisfaction of those Newfoundland district superintendents sampled is determined by, among other factors, their own unique personalities, the situations in which they work, their expectations of the role they are to perform and the role expectations of incumbents of counter positions. The assumption that any relationship between job satisfaction and role pressure is monotonically inverse was not supported by the results. It was suggested that the relationship might be curvilinear and influenced both by the level of pressure and, more importantly, the individual's threshold for coping with this pressure. -- It was further suggested that a more extensive application of role theory to the analysis of hierarchically structured organizations such as educational districts might lead to a better understanding of the functioning of these organizations and of the determinants of the effectiveness and satisfaction of the individual office incumbents. A written job description was proposed as an initial attempt to remove the ambiguity which clouds certain areas of the superintendency role.

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