Job Satisfaction,Organizational Commitment,and Religious Commitment of Full-Time University Employees

This study investigated the relationship of job satisfaction and organizational and religious commitment among full time workers at Akra University (a pseudonym) based on a number of demographic factors. Analysis of variance using the Games-Howell procedure revealed that workers who were older than age 46 years had higher job satisfaction and organizational and religious commitment than younger employees. It was also noted that workers holding doctoral degrees had higher levels of job satisfaction and religious commitment than individuals with a high school diploma only. It was evident that the longer employees stayed at this institution, the higher the levels of organizational commitment and extrinsic job satisfaction, and administrators and sector managers had higher levels of intrinsic job satisfaction and religious commitment than those in other occupational areas.     

The Relative Influence of Youth and Adult Experiences on Personal Spirituality and Church Involvement

We surveyed 206 young adults who had grown up in middle-class churches in three denominations—Baptist, Catholic, and Methodist—who were first studied at age 16 in 1976. The goal was to assess the relative strength of youth and adult influences on their personal religious and institutional church involvement at age 38. The determinants of these two outcomes at 38 varied widely. For personal spirituality such as private prayer, attending Bible classes, and reading religious material, we found strong youth and adult determinants such as the denomination of one's youth, church youth group participation, having an experience since high school that changed their feelings about the church, and attending church with one's spouse. For church involvement, however, all but one of the determinants occurred after age 16, mainly the experiences of being inactive in church after high school, switching denominations, having children, and going to church with one's spouse. Social learning theory was the best theory for explaining these findings.     

A NOTE CONCERNING THE MATCHED GROUP DESIGN

Despite its strong logical and technical appeal, the employment of the matched group design in applied psychological research has been restricted by practical problems associated with its use. A procedure which circumvents several of the problems of conventional matching was described. Basically, the procedure involves pairing of subjects from two or more treatment pools after the completion of training or other treatment, but without knowledge of the performance of the subjects. Three empirical tryouts of the procedure were summarized. The procedure worked quite well when only two groups were involved and was fairly satisfactory when applied to four groups. Other experimental designs may be better when more than two groups are involved. It was concluded that matching from treatment pools after differential treatment of the pools warrants more extensive use in applied psychological research than it has been accorded in the past.