Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate how certain factors - especially dietitians' general characteristics and job burnout - influence their job satisfaction and turnover intention. The survey was conducted during the period from September 7th to October 15th of 2006. A total of 91 institutions (response rate 74.6%) was analyzed by using SPSS (windows ver. 14.0). A majority of the respondents were females (97.8%) and 30 years or older (66.0%). Among the job burnout dimensions, exhaustion (2.78 +/- 0.07) was rated higher than cynicism (2.62 +/- 0.06), while the professional efficacy level (3.55 +/- 0.05) was relatively high. The dietitians were more satisfied with co-workers (3.73 +/- 0.07) and work (3.41 +/- 0.06) than with pay (2.66 +/- 0.07) and promotion (2.32 +/- 0.07). The work dimension of job satisfaction was negatively correlated with exhaustion and cynicism dimensions of job burnout, and turnover intention (P < 0.001), but positively correlated with professional efficacy dimension (P < 0.001). The supervision dimension was negatively correlated with cynicism (P < 0.05) and turnover intention (P < 0.001), but positively correlated with professional efficacy dimension (P < 0.01). The co-workers dimension was positively correlated with professional efficacy dimension (P < 0.01). The pay dimension was negatively correlated with exhaustion (P < 0.001) and cynicism (P < 0.01) dimensions and turnover intention (P < 0.001). The promotion dimension was negatively correlated with cynicism (P < 0.01). The turnover intention was positively correlated with exhaustion and cynicism dimensions of job burnout (P < 0.001). A hierarchical regression analysis revealed that i) professional efficacy was a factor to significantly increase job satisfaction, ii) cynicism to significantly decrease their job satisfaction, and iii) exhaustion to significantly increase turnover intention.

• Keywords: welfare institution for the disabled; dietitian; job satisfaction; turnover intention; job burnout