Abstract

This study aims to explore the factors that affect the job satisfaction of social workers in social service agencies for the elderly. Especially, it attempted to explore how the individual characteristics of the social workers and their work conditions affect their level of job satisfaction. The subjects of this study were 368 social workers who were selected from the survey of the 2006 Korean National Association of Social Workers-Gyeonggi chapter. The level of job satisfaction were measured by the 12-item questionnaire (Cronbach's alpha=.914). This study conducted descriptive statistics analyses and multiple regression analyses to explore the determinants of job satisfaction of social workers in social service agencies for the elderly. Sex, level of education among the individual traits and major task, working hour, job title, salary, infringe benefit among work conditions were statistically significant predictors to the level of the job satisfaction, while only task traits such as working hour, job title, and salary were still remained as statistically significant determinants in the total model. The result of this study shows that social workers who were female, less educated, working more, lower job hierarchy, and less paid had a lower level of job satisfaction than their counterparts. Therefore, more policy and program considerations should be took for them to improve their levels of job satisfaction and finally enable them to better serve the elderly in our society. (Korean J Str Res 2008;16:317∼324)

• Keywords: Elderly, Social workers, Individual characteristics, Work condition, Job satisfaction;