Religiosity, Spirituality and Their Relationship to Job Satisfaction Quantitative Data from Faith-Based Schools in Australia – Part One
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Abstract
This paper is the first of a two-part report on a mixed methods study that examined the job satisfaction of teachers who worked in faith-based schools. Five aspects of the work of teaching (colleagues, working conditions, responsibility, work itself, and recognition) and two transcendent factors (spirituality and religiosity) were examined to see how they impacted overall job satisfaction. In this mixed methods project, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from a sample that consisted of nine schools in two Australian faith-based educational systems: Lutheran and Seventh-day Adventist. This paper reports on the findings from regression analysis of the quantitative data (N = 221), which indicated that overall job satisfaction was influenced by a combination of direct and indirect relationships that centred around working conditions, work itself, religiosity, and the age of the respondent. It also was found that religiosity impacted overall job satisfaction directly and indirectly via the mediating element of spirituality. A partial discussion of the results is presented in this report, but the complete discussion will be found in Part Two (2024).
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