Development of an instrument to measure job satisfaction among dentists.

Because of the rapid changes that have occurred in the dental profession, the Dentist Satisfaction Survey (DSS) was developed to assess both facet and overall job satisfaction among dentists. The DSS was administered to a sample of 558 California general dentists. The results suggest that the DSS is a practical, reliable, and valid measure of dentists' job satisfaction. Internal consistency reliability coefficients for all facet subscales and the overall job satisfaction scale ranged from 0.60-0.92. The DSS discriminated between groups of dentists known to have different levels of job satisfaction; dentists identified by dental society presidents as being very dissatisfied scored significantly differently in the hypothesized direction on the DSS. A high correlation (r = 0.68) was found between judges' independent ratings of dentists' satisfaction based on their open-ended comments and DSS scores. While the majority of respondents were satisfied with most facets of their jobs, substantial variation was found among dentists in their levels of satisfaction.