A study of job characteristics and job dimensions as based on the Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ).

Abstract : It was hypothesized that, across the spectrum of jobs, there is some underlying 'structure' of human work in terms of the human behaviors involved. The project was directed toward the identification of behaviorial job elements and of their organization into job dimensions, and the exploration of certain possible practical applications of job data based on such job elements or dimensions. The project involved the development of a job analysis instrument called the Position Analysis Questionnaires (PAQ) that included 189 job elements of a worker-oriented nature. Principal components analysis procedures were used in the analyses of two types of data based on the PAQ. One set consisted of job data for 536 jobs that were analyzed with the PAQ. The other consisted of 'attribute profiles' of the job elements; (These consisted of median ratings of the relevance of 67 human attributes to each job element). (Author)