Correspondence between occupational rewards and occupational needs and work satisfaction: A canonical redundancy analysis

Abstract

The following hypothesis was derived from a general theory of work adjustment: the better the correspondence between occupational rewards and individual occupational needs, the greater will be employee satisfaction at work. Two samples of social workers were studied: one to obtain the occupational rewards levels, and the second to gauge individual occupational needs levels and satisfaction ratings with different work aspects. Then, vectors of difference scores between occupational needs and occupational rewards were computed for each of the subjects in the second sample, as a measure of the above correspondence.The canonical correlation analysis method was employed to ascertain the strength of association between these difference score vectors and satisfaction ratings among the subjects in the second sample. A canonical correlation of 0.84 (P<0.01) was revealed, indicating that a strong association exists. A canonical redundancy analysis was also taken as a precautionary measure. The conceptual implications of this analysis were discussed.