MINNESOTA SATISFACTION QUESTIONNAIRE – PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES AND VALIDATION IN A POPULATION OF PORTUGUESE HOSPITAL WORKERS

Job Satisfaction is usually treated as a collection of feelings or affective responses associated with the job situation, or “simply how people feel about different aspects of their jobs” (Spector, 1997: 2). In 1967, Weiss et al. developed the short version of the MSQ - Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire, a 5-point Likert-type scale with 20 items. This scale has been widely used in the literature being a well-known and stable over the time instrument with previous researches yielding excellent coefficient alpha. In this study we developed an exploratory factor analysis to assess the factor structure of this scale in a Hospital Workers sample, with N=140, recurring to IBM – PASW and encountered a 2-factor structure. Following this procedure, we conducted a Confirmatory Factor Analysis using AMOS, where our exploratory structure was compared with other structures found in previous studies. This work aims at improving our understanding of the nature and assessment of Job Satisfaction in the Portuguese healthcare context, providing a more stable ground for future research in this area.