Measuring Teacher Job Satisfaction: Assessing Invariance in the Teacher Job Satisfaction Scale (TJSS) Across Six Countries

Abstract

Work and organizational psychology has long been concerned with measuring job satisfaction in organizational contexts, and this has carried across to the field of education, leading to a research focus on the work-related satisfaction of teachers. Today, a myriad of organizations continue to assess employees’ job satisfaction on a routine basis (Liu, Borg, & Spector, 2004). Unfortunately, a sort of balkanization of the field has resulted in the production of dozens of specific measurement tools, making it difficult to cross-compare samples and contexts. The present paper tested the measurement invariance of the Teacher Job Satisfaction Scale (TJSS) in six international cohorts (Netherlands, United States, Russia China, Italy and Palestine) of in-service teachers (N = 2,819). Confirmatory factor analysis and multi-group invariance tests were applied. The TJSS-9 displayed robust psychometric proprieties and no substantial departures from measurement invariance (configural and metric). Future research is required to further test equivalence across additional countries, with view to developing a truly international tool for measuring job satisfaction in teaching.