Salaries and satisfactions of medical school psychologists.

Abstract

Given discrepancies between salaries of psychologists and psychiatrists in medical schools, data from a 1977 survey are analyzed to investigate the relationship of salary to professional activities and to vocational satisfactions of medical school psychologists. As expected, both current and potential salaries are highly correlated with items involving seniority and rank, as well as with beliefs of appropriate skill utilization and advantages accruing in the setting. Salaries are negatively related to time spent in diagnostic and therapeutic work. Only salary expectations are significantly related to personal satisfactions and comparative occupational freedoms. Vocational interests and career commitments of medical school psychologists are not closely tied to salaries. These results are discussed in relationship to reference groups and future surveys.1 This sample included not only psychologists appointed to departments of psychiatry but also those appointed elsewhere in their respective medical schools. Chief psychologists were excluded from this sample because their 1976 surveys did not include a salary item. This affected the absolute salaries reported and may have affected the relationships reported between salary items and other variables.

Values and Organizational Justice

“…Rusbult et al (1995) also commented on the widespread use of seniority in real organizations. For example, salary normally increases with age and tenure (Leonard, 1990;Nathan, Lubin, & Matarazzo, 1981), more senior employees receive more vacations (Green & Potepan, 1988), and there is a link between promotion rules and seniority (Ingram & Bellenger, 1983). However, no empirical study has investigated whether employees in organizations perceive allocations based on seniority as fair.…”