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The Priest, the Sex Worker, and the CEO: Measuring Motivation by Job Type

This study uses latent semantic analysis (LSA) to explore how prevalent measures of motivation are interpreted across very diverse job types. Building on the Semantic Theory of Survey Response (STSR), we calculate “semantic compliance” as the degree to which an individual’s responses follow a semant...

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Autores principales: Arnulf, Jan Ketil, Nimon, Kim, Larsen, Kai Rune, Hovland, Christiane V., Arnesen, Merethe
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7316959/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32636786
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01321
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author Arnulf, Jan Ketil
Nimon, Kim
Larsen, Kai Rune
Hovland, Christiane V.
Arnesen, Merethe
author_facet Arnulf, Jan Ketil
Nimon, Kim
Larsen, Kai Rune
Hovland, Christiane V.
Arnesen, Merethe
author_sort Arnulf, Jan Ketil
collection PubMed
description This study uses latent semantic analysis (LSA) to explore how prevalent measures of motivation are interpreted across very diverse job types. Building on the Semantic Theory of Survey Response (STSR), we calculate “semantic compliance” as the degree to which an individual’s responses follow a semantically predictable pattern. This allows us to examine how context, in the form of job type, influences respondent interpretations of items. In total, 399 respondents from 18 widely different job types (from CEOs through lawyers, priests and artists to sex workers and professional soldiers) self-rated their work motivation on eight commonly applied scales from research on motivation. A second sample served as an external evaluation panel (n = 30) and rated the 18 job types across eight job characteristics. Independent measures of the job types’ salary levels were obtained from national statistics. The findings indicate that while job type predicts motivational score levels significantly, semantic compliance as moderated by job type job also predicts motivational score levels usually at a lesser but significant magnitude. Combined, semantic compliance and job type explained up to 41% of the differences in motional score levels. The variation in semantic compliance was also significantly related to job characteristics as rated by an external panel, and to national income levels. Our findings indicate that people in different contexts interpret items differently to a degree that substantially affects their score levels. We discuss how future measurements of motivation may improve by taking semantic compliance and the STSR perspective into consideration.
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spelling pubmed-73169592020-07-06 The Priest, the Sex Worker, and the CEO: Measuring Motivation by Job Type Arnulf, Jan Ketil Nimon, Kim Larsen, Kai Rune Hovland, Christiane V. Arnesen, Merethe Front Psychol Psychology This study uses latent semantic analysis (LSA) to explore how prevalent measures of motivation are interpreted across very diverse job types. Building on the Semantic Theory of Survey Response (STSR), we calculate “semantic compliance” as the degree to which an individual’s responses follow a semantically predictable pattern. This allows us to examine how context, in the form of job type, influences respondent interpretations of items. In total, 399 respondents from 18 widely different job types (from CEOs through lawyers, priests and artists to sex workers and professional soldiers) self-rated their work motivation on eight commonly applied scales from research on motivation. A second sample served as an external evaluation panel (n = 30) and rated the 18 job types across eight job characteristics. Independent measures of the job types’ salary levels were obtained from national statistics. The findings indicate that while job type predicts motivational score levels significantly, semantic compliance as moderated by job type job also predicts motivational score levels usually at a lesser but significant magnitude. Combined, semantic compliance and job type explained up to 41% of the differences in motional score levels. The variation in semantic compliance was also significantly related to job characteristics as rated by an external panel, and to national income levels. Our findings indicate that people in different contexts interpret items differently to a degree that substantially affects their score levels. We discuss how future measurements of motivation may improve by taking semantic compliance and the STSR perspective into consideration. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-06-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7316959/ /pubmed/32636786 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01321 Text en Copyright © 2020 Arnulf, Nimon, Larsen, Hovland and Arnesen. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Arnulf, Jan Ketil
Nimon, Kim
Larsen, Kai Rune
Hovland, Christiane V.
Arnesen, Merethe
The Priest, the Sex Worker, and the CEO: Measuring Motivation by Job Type
title The Priest, the Sex Worker, and the CEO: Measuring Motivation by Job Type
title_full The Priest, the Sex Worker, and the CEO: Measuring Motivation by Job Type
title_fullStr The Priest, the Sex Worker, and the CEO: Measuring Motivation by Job Type
title_full_unstemmed The Priest, the Sex Worker, and the CEO: Measuring Motivation by Job Type
title_short The Priest, the Sex Worker, and the CEO: Measuring Motivation by Job Type
title_sort priest, the sex worker, and the ceo: measuring motivation by job type
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7316959/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32636786
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01321
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