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PERSON-ENVIRONMENT FIT IN HUMAN SERVICE SETTINGS: AN EXAMINATION OF SOCIAL CLIMATE AND JOB SATISFACTION
Abstract
A social-ecological theoretical framework was used to design a study which explored the relationship between person-environment fit and job satisfaction of staff members in human service settings. Person-environment fit is one way of addressing the interrelationships between people and their context within a social-ecological perspective. Person-environment fit was operationalized by creating two indices which measured the discrepancies between an individual's perceptions of the real and ideal social environment and the normative perception of his or her reference group. In addition, an index was formed to measure the discrepancy between a single individual's perception of the real versus the ideal environment. The three discrepancy indices were calculated for each of two environmental dimensions, treatment orientation and setting flexibility. The discrepancy indices were examined as potential predictors of three measures of psychological comfort: overall job satisfaction and satisfaction with client progress and with supervision. It was hypothesized that all three indices would be negatively correlated with the job satisfaction measures, i.e., as the person-environment and individual discrepancies increase, job satisfaction decreases. Further, the ability of the person-environment indices to predict job satisfaction was compared to that of the individual index. These relationships were examined for staff members in four samples, two drawn from an in-patient psychiatric hospital and two drawn from a residential treatment agency for children. Data from the study moderately supported the hypothesis. The predictive abilities of the person-environment fit and individual discrepancies were approximately equal. The data were discussed in terms of the implications for performing person-environment fit research in general and for using social climate scales in particular.
Subject Area
Psychotherapy
Recommended Citation
BRADLEY, JOHN MACKEMER, "PERSON-ENVIRONMENT FIT IN HUMAN SERVICE SETTINGS: AN EXAMINATION OF SOCIAL CLIMATE AND JOB SATISFACTION" (1980). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8021335.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8021335