The occupational work ethic of student workers : a generational approach

This study was conducted to investigate the occupational work ethic of student workers at The University of Tennessee from a generational approach. The purpose of this study was to establish baseline data establishing the occupational work ethic of student workers and to identify demographic trends within the sample. Once identified, this information provided The University of Tennessee with insights into the work ethic of student workers. This comprehensive understanding of the work ethic may lead to more effective student worker services, such as tailored training initiatives . TI1e subjects in this study were students who were enrolled in courses and employed part-time by The University of Tennessee during spring semester 2002. The Occupational Work Ethic Inventory (OWEI), designed by Petty, was used to determine the occupational work ethic of the subjects. The OWEI examines work ethic in three subscales: (a) interpersonal skills, (b) initiative, and (c) being dependable. Means, standard deviations, correlations and frequency counts were the descriptive statistics methods used to analyze responses to the numeric research questions. A multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to analyze the continuous demographic information as determined by the independent variables. Cronbach's Alpha was calculated to investigate the three subscale categories. The results indicated a significant relationship between the occupational work ethic subscales and gender. Females tended to have significantly higher score than did males for two of the three subscales. No significant relationships were found between the occupational work ethic and various demographic variables.