Hackman 1975 - Development of the Job Diagnostic Survey

Google Scholar Link

Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1975). Development of the job diagnostic survey. Journal of Applied psychology, 60(2), 159.

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If interested in administering this to a group (it is not meant for a single individual), I would also check for revisions to the original instrument.

Summary

At almost 50 years old, the Job Diagnostic Survey still provides some unique insights into job satisfaction and motivation. The positive work outcomes of high internal motivation, high work satisfaction, high quality performance, and low absenteeism and turnover are driven by three “psychological states:” experienced meaningfulness at work, experienced responsibility for the outcomes of the work, and knowledge of the results of the work activities.

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Experienced meaningfulness, or how valuable or worthwhile a job is to an employee, consists of three primary parts - skill variety, task identity, and task significance. Skill variety refers to the different skills required by a job (a factory line job where you stand in one spot and do one thing over and over would have low experienced meaningfulness in this category). Task identity refers to “doing a job from beginning to end with a visible outcome.” In the previous example, since an individual would only work on one part of a complete task, the task identity would be low. Task significance refers to how impactful the job is in the lives of other people. A factory job could be either high in task significance (as in the case of Lysol workers during the pandemic) or low. Experienced responsibility for the outcomes of the work refers to the personal autonomy (or perceived autonomy) and accountability of the employee. Finally, knowledge of the results of the work activities refers to how much feedback an employee gets (and understands) regarding their performance. Additionally, the JDS takes into account the degree of social interaction required by a job and the “growth satisfactions” of the employee.

Application

The psychometrics are from the seventies, so they’re a bit dated (e.g., no factor analysis), but the correlations look good in terms of valence. The motivating potential score’s median correlation with absenteeism is -0.25 and its correlation with a summary measure of performance is only .24. These low correlations indicate that the model described is only a partial one. As a note, this survey would be most useful in diagnosing a whole unit. For example, comparing the same department at different branches, or looking within a single branch for outliers.