MOTIVATION AND JOB SATISFACTION ON THE WORK TERM OF COOPERATIVE STUDENTS

In a recent paper Wilson (1970) has defined the essence of cooperative education as the introduction into an academic curriculum of non-scholastic work. With only a single unique distinguishing feature we might expect that considerable research would have been conducted on this topic. Yet a survey of research in cooperative education indicates that most studies have been concerned with the consequences of the work experience (academic achievement, drop-out rates, application of theory to real situations, etc.) rather than with the work itself. Two important aspects of any work situation are motivation and job satisfaction; in the present study motivation and job satisfaction are examined in the cooperative education setting.

There exists an extensive literature in industrial psychology on motivation and job satisfaction. One of the better theories (and one with considerable empirical support) is that proposed by Maslow (1954). He divides motivations or needs into levels in a "hierarchy of needs" structure, such that lower level needs must be satisfied before higher needs become effective motivators of behavior. The most basic needs are physiological ones, for food, water, oxygen, and sleep. Since this need level has little relevance for a theory of industrial motivation, only Maslow' s higher needs are included. These needs, as modified by Porter (1961) and others, are ordered from low to high in the hierarchy as follows (from Beer, 1966, p. 25, and Maslow, 1954):

1. Security Needs: The desire for a predictable, structured, and reliable environment. The desire for "fairness" and a familiar nonthreatening environment.
2. Social Needs: The desire for belonging. The desire for association, for acceptance by one's fellows, for giving and receiving friendship and love.
3. Esteem Needs: The desire for reputation or prestige, respect or esteem from other people, status, dominance, recognition, attention, importance, or appreciation. A desire for esteem from others.
4. Autonomy Needs: The desire for independence and freedom. The desire for achievement, competence, mastery, adequacy, and confidence. The desire for self-respect and self-esteem based on one's own opinion of one-self as reflected in the specific factors just listed.
5. Self-Actualization Needs: The desire to realize one's own potential. The desire for growth and self-development, and the desire to become everything that one is capable of becoming.

Beer (1966) has constructed a scale (the Preference Inventory), using extensive test development procedures, to measure these five need categories. In addition, he has constructed a Job Inventory, which measures the opportunity to satisfy on the job each of the five needs. The difference between the scores on the two inventories is taken as a measure of need fulfillment.

A number of studies have demonstrated the validity of Maslow's system for the industrial situation. A comprehensive study by Porter (1962) showed that the needs of self-actualization and autonomy were the least fulfilled needs at all levels of management. A later study by Beer (1968) demonstrated a high degree of similarity between female clerical employees and Porter's group of managers. It is important to point out that no studies have yet been undertaken to show that need fulfillment as measured here is related to an independent measure of job satisfaction. Other studies have, however, evaluated how workers rank different factors in terms of their importance to job satisfaction. In a review of 16 different studies Herzberg, Mausner, Peterson and Capwell (1957) report that security and opportunity for advancement are ranked as most important, and job benefits and ease of work as least important. Moreover, Vroom (1964) concludes that job dissatisfaction is related to greater turnover, more frequent absences, and perhaps to accident rate. The relation of job satisfaction to job performance or productivity is rather equivocal.

The research literature on motivation and job satisfaction clearly indicates the relevance of these variables to the permanent job situation. But are they relevant to the work experience of the cooperative student? It might be argued that this work experience is unique in that it is of short duration and is clearly of a training nature. Furthermore, it has been said that the only things that matter to the student are the size of his paycheck and the location of his job. Consequently, the present study will attempt to determine whether Maslow' s need hierarchy has any validity for the cooperative student.

Finally, it is necessary to consider the role of the coordinator in the cooperative work situation. In most institutions he must not only under-stand the student in order to place him in an appropriate work setting, but he must also help the student interpret his work experiences. In fact, coordinators see themselves as primarily counselors (Wilson, 1969). If, indeed, motivational factors are relevant to the cooperative student, it is vitally important that the coordinator have a clear understanding of the student's needs, and the opportunities to fulfill these needs on the job. Thus, this study will also investigate coordinators' views of needs and need satisfaction.

Procedure

The test materials utilized in this investigation were the two scales developed by Beer (The Preference Inventory and the Job Inventory), and one scale modified from them (the Job Inventory for Employers). The Preference Inventory measures the importance of the five needs to the individual, the Job Inventory measures the opportunity to fulfill these needs on the job, and the Job Inventory for Employers measures the opportunity for fulfillment that the employer expects an employee to have on the job. All three of these scales consist of six sets of five items each. Each item represents a different need level. The task for the subject is to rank order the items in each set. A score for each need level is obtained by summing the ranks assigned to the six items in that category. Thus, low scores represent a more important need or a greater opportunity to satisfy that need. In addition, three extra items were added to the Job Inventory. The students were asked to rate their general satisfaction with the job (very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, very dissatisfied), their expectations about salary (better than expected, about what expected, less than expected), and their feelings about the location of the job (exactly where they wanted to spend the term, not what preferred but all right, in a most undesirable place).

The coordinators in this study were drawn from the engineering and liberal arts coordinators at Northeastern University. These two groups showed the greatest homogeneity of attitudes about the student-coordinator relationship in Wilson's (1969) study. Only coordinators with at least one year's experience with their present group of students were included. Some coordinators were unable to participate in the study because of pressure of time, etc., and the final sample consisted of nine coordinators. ²

Each coordinator was asked to select 10 of his students (one coordinator voluntarily selected 20 students) in accordance with the following criteria: (a) male, (b) currently on his work term, (c) his first term on that job, and (d) the coordinator thinks that this is a "good" placement. For each student the coordinator completed one Preference Inventory (hereafter called the PI-C) as he would expect the student to answer it, and one Job Inventory for Employers (termed here the JI-C).

The resulting group of 100 students were contacted by mail, and asked to participate in the study on their return to the campus. They were requested to pick up the questionnaires from an office in the Department of Cooperative Education, and to return them as soon as they were completed. A few students did not return to the university for academic or financial reasons. However, thanks to follow-up letters and phone calls, a total of 84 students eventually completed both the Preference Inventory (to be called the PI-S) and the Job Inventory (to be called the JI-S). The percentage of students completing the questionnaires per coordinator ranged from 60% to 100%.

For each student, scores for the five need levels were obtained from each of the four inventories: PI-C, JI-C, PI-S, and JI-S. Each need level or sub-scale score was divided by six; thus each score is indicative of the rank assigned to a single statement in that need category. In addition, the student's rating of satisfaction, salary, and geographical location were recorded.

Result and Discussion

Let us first consider the relevance of needs and their satisfaction to cooperative students. Table 1 presents the mean rank of each need (PI-S), of perceived opportunity for need satisfaction (JI-S), and of actual need satisfaction for the 84 students. Actual need satisfaction was obtained by subtracting the score for JI-S from the score for PI-S, thus a negative score indicates a need deficiency. The need dimension are presented according to Maslow' s order from security, the lowest level need, to self-actualization, the highest level need. Notice that the students rank needs in the following order of importance: self-actualization, autonomy, social, esteem, and security. Self-actualization and autonomy are clustered together as very important needs, followed at some distance by social and esteem needs. Security is considerably less important to these subjects. This ordering is very much in accord with Maslow's need hierarchy, and certainly demonstrates the relevance of needs in the work experience of cooperative students.

Table 1
Mean Need, Perceived Opportunity for Need Satisfaction, and Actual Need Satisfaction for Cooperative Students

The rank ordering of the opportunity to satisfy their various needs is rather similar. In other words, the more important needs are more likely to have opportunities for satisfaction on the job than the less important ones. In contrast, observe that the ordering of need satisfaction is almost the opposite of that of need importance. These subjects experience a very serious deficiency in their satisfaction of self-actualization despite the fact that this need was ranked very high in opportunity for satisfaction. Moreover, the students appear to have rather more opportunity to satisfy their security needs than they would prefer.

Table 2
Comparison of Three Groups of Employees on Rankings of Need Importance and Need Satisfaction

* From Beer (1968)
+ From Porter (1962)

Table 2 permits the comparison of rankings in need importance and need satisfaction among cooperative students in this study, Beer's (1968) clerical employees, and Porter's {1962}lower level managers. Observe the similarity among these three groups of workers. For all groups, self-actualization is the most important need, and the least satisfied one. The only discrepancy of any significance seems to be for security needs: the students receive too much security, other subjects have some deficiencies. The students may, indeed, experience a more structured, routine situation than they need, or perhaps this result is due to the temporary nature of the cooperative job, or even be indicative of changing attitudes in this generation of college students.

Il we examine need importance and opportunity to fulfill needs as seen by the coordinator we find orderings rather similar to those made by the students. Let us make a much more detailed comparison of the student and coordinator rankings by considering Table 3. This table presents the mean rank for each need dimension on each of the four inventories in column 1 to 4. Various difference scores are then presented in columns 5 to 8. The first of these difference scores is a measure of the need satisfaction expected by the coordinator, obtained by subtracting the JI-C from the PI-C. Negative scores indicate expected need deficiency. The next column contains the actual need satisfaction scores that were also presented in Table 1, and discussed earlier. The next column, the Preference Match, is a comparison of the scores on the Preference Inventory made by the students and the coordinators. Since it is obtained by subtracting PI-S from PI-C, a negative score means that the students think that this need dimension is less important than do the coordinators. The last column is a comparison of the opportunities for need satisfaction as seen by the students and coordinators. It is obtained by subtracting JI-S from JI-C, and as before, a negative score indicates that the student perceives less opportunity to satisfy that need than does the coordinator.

Table 3
Mean Ranks for Each Need Dimension on the Four Inventories, and Mean Difference Scores Between the Four Inventories

A comparison of expected need satisfaction and actual need satisfaction ( columns 5 and 6) reveals that the coordinators generally anticipated the need deficiency experienced by their students. They did not, however, anticipate the extent of the dissatisfaction in self-actualization, nor the abundance of security perceived by the students. They also expected the students to have less opportunity to satisfy their autonomy needs than the jobs, in fact, permitted. For the most part this group of coordinators has estimated very accurately the sources of need dissatisfaction, and should be well able to understand and interpret problems that their students may have had on the job.

In column 7 the differences between the mean ranks on the PI-C and the PI-S are presented. The coordinators seem to have a good understanding of the relative importance of these needs to the students. There is some tendency to overestimate the importance of esteem needs, and under-estimate the social needs. Perhaps the coordinators have projected some of their own needs into their predictions of the students' responses.

A rather different pattern emerges in column 8, where the difference between the coordinators' and students' evaluations of opportunity to satisfy needs are presented. Here there are a number of rather large discrepancies: coordinators see the jobs ae providing more opportunity to satisfy esteem and self actualization needs, less opportunity to satisfy autonomy, social, and security needs, than do the students. This finding is strongly indicative of large differences between the way coordinators view the jobs, and the way students see the jobs. Such differences are very likely to lead to difficulties in placements by the coordinator as well as communication problems in counselling the students.

Table 4
Mean Ratings of Salary and Location

Up to this point we have not considered job satisfaction. All of the students estimated their overall satisfaction with the job on a 4-point scale. Ofthe84subjects, 51 were very satisfied, 21 were somewhat satisfied, and 12 were somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. All coordinators had at least two students who were not very satisfied; the students of one coordinator were no more (or less) satisfied with their job than were the students of any other coordinator. Let us first examine whether satisfaction is a function of salary or location. Table 4 contains the mean ratings for salary and location for each of the three satisfaction levels (satisfied, less satisfied, and dissatisfied). Though satisfied students were slightly more likely to report that their salary was about what they expected or higher than were dissatisfied students, these differences did not even approach statistical significance. nor are there are differences in the desirability of the location of their work. This is not to say that salary and location are unimportant, but rather, that once a minimum salary level is reached, other considerations become more important. This "minimum salary level" for the cooperative student is likely based on expectations determined by the salaries received by other students at his level in previous terms, rather than being a fixed number of dollars.

Table 5
Mean Ranks and Difference Scores for Satisfied (S), Less Satisfied (L), and Dissatisfied (D) Subjects

Now let us turn to needs and need satisfaction as revealed in the various inventories. Table 5 contains the same information as presented in Table 3, except that the scores are calculated as a function of satisfaction level. Each set of three means and each set of three difference scores was tested by a one-way analysis of variance to determine whether there were any significant differences among the three satisfaction levels. Asterisks appear at the top of each set where the three scores were significantly different from each other (p < . 05).

Examination of Table 5 reveals that, with three exceptions, there were no significant differences as a function of satisfaction level in the needs of the students as seen by the coordinators (column 1), in their need as seen by the students themselves (column 2), in the opportunity for need fulfillment as seen by the coordinators (column 3), in expected need satisfaction (column 5), or in the preference matches (column 7). Two of the exceptions were for autonomy- opportunity for need fulfillment and expected need satisfaction- but these significant differences were not systematically related to satisfaction level, and thus seem best considered as chance findings. Significant differences were, however, found in the need for self-actualization: satisfied subjects place less importance on this need than do subjects who are not so satisfied with their jobs. This reduced need may, in fact, contribute to their greatest satisfaction in so far as most jobs are seen as being deficient in the opportunities they provide for satisfying the need for self-actualization. In general, though, we may conclude that satisfied students do not differ from their less satisfied or dissatisfied fellow students either in their needs, or the way the coordinators see their needs. Furthermore, there is no evidence of differential placements: coordinators view the jobs of all students, regardless of ultimate satisfaction level, as having equal opportunity to satisfy (or dissatisfy) their needs.

Large differences are found as a function of satisfaction level for the opportunity for need fulfillment as seen by the students (column 4), need satisfaction (column 6), and job match (column 8). Dissatisfied subjects find that their jobs offer more opportunity for satisfying security and social needs, less opportunity for satisfying autonomy and self-actualization needs, than do satisfied subjects. Consequently, these dissatisfied subjects experience more social and security satisfaction than desired, and a deficiency in the satisfaction of their autonomy and self-actualization needs. Similarly, there are significant discrepancies as a function of satisfaction level in the way coordinators and students see the jobs: dissatisfied subjects see the jobs as offering more security, less self-actualization and autonomy than do the coordinators, while satisfied subjects see the jobs more like the coordinators do. It is important to note that the largest differences among the satisfaction levels are found for the needs of self-actualization and security, Maslow's highest and lowest needs, respectively. In short, then, dissatisfied subjects find that their jobs give them relatively little opportunity for self-actualization, and more security than they need. This results in there being large differences as a function of satisfaction level for the self-actualization and security dimensions of need satisfaction and job matches.

Students as a group find their jobs to have too little opportunity for self-actualization, too much security; dissatisfied students experience this to an even greater extent. The question remains as to whether this finding is a failing of the student or of the coordinator. In other words, do students expect too much of their jobs, or do coordinators not appreciate the shortcomings of the employment situation? We might also ask, what is the job really like- as the coordinator sees it or as the student sees it? These questions cannot be answered from the present study, but since it is the students who must work at the job, it would appear that coordinators should take into account in both their placement role and their counselling role the special problems posed by student needs for self-actualization and security.

Finally, we should not leave this discussion of the results without mentioning the original selection criteria for obtaining the students in this study. Most important of these was that the student be considered a "good placement"; that is, the student and job were good matches. For the most part, coordinators do not take needs into account in making their placements, but rather, are concerned with the abilities and interests of the students and the skills required on the job. Thus a "good placement" is likely defined by the coordinator in terms of job content. We might well wonder what results would be obtained with a "poor placement" as the criterion. Perhaps psychological factors like needs are important only when the job content is satisfied. Or perhaps the effects found here as a function of satisfaction level are greatly magnified with poorer placements, Only further research can provide the answers to these questions,

Conclusions and Implications

In conclusion we may say that this study has demonstrated the validity of Maslow's need hierarchy to the work experience of the cooperative student. Throughout the results of this study the relevance of the need hierarchy has been apparent. Not only do the students order their needs like other workers do, but the highest level need (self-actualization) and the lowest level need (security) are seen as the source of much job dissatisfaction. As a group these cooperative students find too little opportunity for the fulfillment of self-actualization needs, too much fulfillment of security needs. Those students who were dissatisfied with their placements exhibit the same pattern, but considerably magnified, On the basis of this study, it appears that coordinators as a group evaluate student needs very well, but are much less adequate at evaluating the opportunity for need satisfaction on the job. Job satisfaction was found to be unrelated to salary and location, but very closely related to the opportunities for need satisfaction that students found on the job,

This study has practical implications for the coordinator both in his finding of jobs and placing students in them, and in his counselling of students. In his placement functions, the coordinator should be reminded of the relative importance of the various need dimensions, and to consider them in the same fashion as abilities and interests in job placements. Perhaps he can also find more jobs that offer the student the chance to develop to his full potential, or to persuade employers to alter their jobs in order to better meet the self-actualization needs of students. But even more important is the need for coordinators to see jobs as students see them; whether this should be accomplished by more industrial experience for coordinators, more training on job evaluation, or simply by a change of viewpoint is not within this writer's competence to decide.

There also seems to be room for improvement in the coordinator's counselling function. From earlier studies such as those by Beer and Porter , it seems that employees exist in a permanent state of dissatisfaction with respect to self-actualization needs. Consequently, it seems appropriate for coordinators to "tell it like it is", so that students might not have such optimistic expectations about their jobs. Much of this counselling, of course, would not be directed at destroying youthful idealism so much as at convincing the student of the necessity of accomplishing the routine and boring tasks in order to undertake more challenging jobs.