The Career Satisfaction Scale: Response bias among men and women

Abstract

Recent studies demonstrate an increasing emphasis on subjective career success. This construct is typically measured using self-report scales, with the most used instrument being the Career Satisfaction Scale of Greenhaus, Parasuraman, and Wormley [Greenhaus, J. H., Parasuraman, S., & Wormley, W. M. (1990). Effects of race on organizational experiences, job performance evaluations, and career outcomes. Academy of Management Journal, 33, 64–86]. As career success is often studied in relation to gender, one may wonder whether men and women rate subjective career success, as measured by the Career Satisfaction Scale (Greenhaus et al., 1990), in the same manner—which is an important requirement when interpreting sex differences. Therefore, this study provides a rigorous evaluation of the Career Satisfaction Scale (Greenhaus et al., 1990) in terms of measurement invariance. The results show that gender invariance of the Career Satisfaction Scale (Greenhaus et al., 1990) does not hold. Implications of these findings in terms of optimal measurement of the subjective career success construct are spelled out.

Introduction

When conducting research on the topic of career success, one must first consider the issues of definition and measurement (Heslin, 2005). The career success construct is commonly subdivided into two correlated yet non-interchangeable constructs: objective and subjective career success (Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005). Note that these two constructs are labeled differently by some vocational psychologists, using career success as a synonym for objective career success and the term career satisfaction for subjective career success. Objective career success, or career success, is generally measured using indicators that can be evaluated by an impartial third party, such as pay, promotion, and occupational status (Heslin, 2005, Judge et al., 1995, Ng et al., 2005). Subjective career success, or career satisfaction, is concerned with the idiosyncratic evaluations individuals make of their own careers (Judge et al., 1995, Melamed, 1996). As such, subjective career success, as opposed to objective career success, inquires not only about success, but also about progress to date, meaningfulness, future prospects, and so on. Although, traditionally, the focus tended to be on objective career success, recent studies demonstrate an increasing emphasis on peoples’ subjective evaluations of their career (Ng et al., 2005, Savickas, 1995).

The Career Satisfaction Scale (CSS) by Greenhaus, Parasuraman, and Wormley (1990) has been used in more than 240 studies (Social Sciences Citation Index citations referring to research applications of the measure). Moreover, it is considered “the best measure available in the literature” (Judge et al., 1995, p. 497). This study evaluates whether this popular one-dimensional measure of subjective career success is gender invariant as differences between men and women in terms of their conceptualizations of what “career success” means are most frequently reported in the literature. Quite a few studies have found that women are less likely than men to reach top levels (Schneer and Reitman, 1995, Stroh et al., 1992) and that they earn lower incomes (Judge et al., 1995, Kirchmeyer, 2002, Schneer and Reitman, 1995, Stroh et al., 1992) but at the same time, women perceive their careers to be as successful as men (Judge et al., 1995, Kirchmeyer, 1998). A meta-analytic study using 22 studies to test the impact of gender on subjective career success found that overall, although the relationship between gender and subjective career success was found to be non-significant, gender did predict operationalizations of objective career success (Ng et al., 2005).

One could wonder, then, whether men and women conceptualize career success in the same manner (i.e. invariantly)—which is an important requirement when comparing career success across gender. As far as objective career success is concerned, this requirement of measurement invariance is obviously fulfilled. Number of promotions or salary holds the same meaning for men as for women. With respect to subjective career success, the situation is somewhat more complex. Items belonging to rating scales that assess subjective career success—the CSS by Greenhaus et al. (1990) being the most prominently used example—measure a non-observable, latent construct. Measurement invariance, for this type of scale, requires that the mathematical functions linking the items of the rating scale to the latent construct are invariant across respondent groups (Borsboom, 2006). In terms of gender, this means that men and women should use the items of the CSS (Greenhaus et al., 1990) in the same way.

Based on the literature, we might expect men and women to exhibit a different response behavior. First of all, since men and women seem to define the career success construct differently (Dyke and Murphy, 2006, Parker and Cusmir, 1990, Sturges, 1999), it is well possible that they use different frames of reference when rating themselves on the construct (i.e. configural non-invariance). Furthermore, it is possible that they use the scale intervals differently (i.e. metric invariance). Technically this means that for a given change on the latent variable, the change in the observed variables differs for both groups. In practice non-invariance regarding the scale intervals may denote two things. The first one is that the response function, mapping the score of the latent variable onto the observed variables, is gender dependent; thus that women and men use the response scale in itself differently. Second and more probable is that men and women value the respective indicators of subjective career success differently. Since the literature suggests that gender differences in the meaning of career success exist even when occupational attainments are similar (Dyke & Murphy, 2006), metric invariance or the invariance of scale intervals can be expected. Finally, it is possible that men and women have different intercepts or different subjective “null points” when it comes to career success (i.e. scalar non-invariance). In this paper, we specifically tested these assumptions. In doing so, we wish to encourage critical reflection on the way in which the career success construct is defined and measured in empirical research, a point on which we will elaborate in Section 4.