The aim of this study was to test several hypotheses that clergy work-related satisfaction could be better explained by a multi-dimensional rather than a uni-dimensional model. A sample of 1071 male stipendiary parochial clergy in the Church of England completed the Clergy Role Inventory, together with the short-form Revised Eysenck Personality It has long been accepted that work is one of the more important domains of life to affect overall life satisfaction (Andrews & Inglehart, 1979;Campbell, Converse & Rodgers, 1976; 5 Headey & Wearing, 1992). Headey, Holmstrom, and Wearing (1985) found that work ranked third in importance of the five domains that together explained most of the variation in reported well-being, and was considered to give greater overall satisfaction than standard of living and health. There is also an extensive literature on the sources of job satisfaction -and dissatisfaction -in the work place and on the mediating influences of job-roles and individual 10 differences in employee predispositions and personality. However, until recently, few formal studies have appeared on work satisfaction among the clergy and other religious professionals.The clergy are commonly regarded as being exposed to relatively few work-related problems and this view is confirmed by several social surveys (Barna, 1993; National 15 Federation of Priests' Councils, 1994). In an ad hoc study of work-induced stress, Cooper (1985) found that members of the clergy were the fifth least-stressed of 60 different occupations. Goetz (1997) reviewed the results of several American surveys and concluded that the clergy demonstrated a remarkably high degree of work satisfaction. Rose (1999) carried out a detailed statistical analysis of some 34,000 observations on job satisfaction 20 collected in the British Household Panel Survey over the period 1991-99. In terms of overall work satisfaction, clergy ranked second only to medical secretaries out of 143 occupational groupings, with 72% of clergy respondents stating that their work satisfaction was "high" or "very high". Indirect evidence for the clergy's satisfaction with their work is provided by demographic data on longevity and the low incidence of stress-related diseases. Lock and 25 Clergy Work Satisfaction 3 King (1980) found that US Baptist clergy lived longer than members of the general population, and King and Lock (1980) proposed white American Presbyterian ministers as a low risk population for mortality research.Other work has been guided by a paradigm that maintains that clergy are subject to a form of sub-clinical occupational stress known as "burnout". This syndrome is characterised by 5 feelings of emotional exhaustion, lack of personal achievement and the development of an uncaring and cynical attitude towards others, and is principally associated with workers in the caring professions (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). It has been argued that clergy are susceptible to burnout because of the peculiar demands of their ministry. Sanford (1982) drew...
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