Term of Award
Fall 2011
Degree Name
Doctor of Education in Education Administration (Ed.D.)
Document Type and Release Option
Dissertation (open access)
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Department
Department of Leadership, Technology, and Human Development
Committee Chair
Teri Denlea Melton
Committee Member 1
Randall Carlson
Committee Member 2
Linda M. Arthur
Abstract
It was the hypothesis of the researcher that exposing criminal justice students to the career field through the completion of a criminal justice internship will increase job satisfaction for the individual in state level investigative law enforcement and the field as a whole. Increased job satisfaction, in turn, produces higher retention rates which may lead to making the state level investigative law enforcement field a more stable environment. Therefore, the purpose of this correlational study was to discover if there was a difference in the score on Spector's Job Satisfaction Survey between state level investigative law enforcement personnel who completed an internship and those who did not. Data were collected by electronically delivering the Job Satisfaction Survey, along with demographic questions, to the personnel from state level investigative law enforcement agencies in Georgia, Tennessee, and Oklahoma through SurveyMonkey©. The participants from Oklahoma were omitted due to the insignificant response. The results were statistically investigated. The findings for those who completed an internship and those who did not were compared across the demographic questions concerning age, gender, experience, and race/ethnicity to determine if these demographics have an impact. Further, scores for those who completed an internship and those who did not were compared across the four sub-scales related to an internship. These sub-scales were: operating conditions, coworkers, nature of work, and communication. It was determined that there was no significant difference in job satisfaction between those who completed an internship and those who did not. Further, it was determined there were no significant differences relating to the demographic questions nor the sub-scales related to an internship; however, mean scores calculated for the sub-scales were highest for nature of work and lowest for operating conditions.
Recommended Citation
Sapp, Catherine J., "Job Satisfaction and the Internship in State Level Law Enforcement" (2011). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 379.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/379
Research Data and Supplementary Material
No
