2003). As in many other research into university personnel, the results of our study concerned faculty and staff together. This was justified because we focused on differences and similarities between age groups. Also, we assumed that job classification selleck screening library (faculty or staff) would add relatively little explanatory information in linear regression analyses beyond perceived work characteristics (Bültmann et al. 2001). Moreover, a large proportion of the university staff were highly educated people with professional job titles (Donders

et al. 2003). However, being a faculty employee appeared to be associated with greater job satisfaction in the 35- to 44-year olds and the oldest age group (see Table 3). According to (Baruch 1999) our response (37%) can be considered acceptable. However, the proportion of youngest employees was lower than in the university population (17 and 24%, respectively). The same applied to the workers with temporary contracts (16% in the sample and 23% in the population, respectively), who are predominantly found in the youngest age group. We

suppose that younger employees were less motivated to participate in a study on the employability and workability of older workers. We do not believe that especially satisfied or only dissatisfied MK-4827 order young workers engaged in the study. Owing to the cross-sectional design of our study, we could not establish causality. Conclusion The results of this study show that differences concerning work characteristics between age groups are present, but rather small. The two midst age groups (35–44 and 45–54 years of age, respectively) had least favourable mean scores in most work characteristics. For HRM and occupational health professionals it is of interest

to know what contributes most to job satisfaction ever and in which work characteristics most gain is to be expected when subject to improvement projects. Following our results, skill discretion and relations with colleagues play a major role. Both work characteristics contributed strongly to the variance in job satisfaction. Also, attention should be given to support from supervisor and opportunities for further education. In all age groups, the mean scores of these work characteristics were disappointing. Moreover, these factors contribute significantly to the job satisfaction of older workers. Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to Jan Burema for his statistical recommendations after reviewing a previous draft of this manuscript. They also would like to thank Hans Bor for sharing his knowledge on SPSS concerning some part of the calculations. Conflict of interest statement The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.