Principal job satisfaction across 27 education systems: trends and within-system associations with staffing shortages and workload, 2013–2024
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Introduction Principal job satisfaction is an indicator of occupational wellbeing and leadership sustainability, yet international evidence on temporal change and organizational correlates remains limited. Methods Harmonized TALIS 2013, 2018, and 2024 principal records ( n = 16,257) were used to obtain design-based estimates for 54−81 education-system-by-cycle cells. The fixed-effects models were estimated at the system-cycle level, with 26 or 27 education systems serving as clustering units. System-cycle estimates incorporated final school weights and 100 Fay-BRR replicate weights; association models used system and cycle fixed effects and CR2/Satterthwaite inference. Results Job satisfaction was virtually unchanged between 2013 and 2018 and modestly lower by 2024, although temporal contrasts were not conclusive after Holm adjustment. Staffing-shortage and workload indices were negatively associated with satisfaction but imprecisely estimated. Retaining the original four shortage-response categories preserved the negative direction of all staffing coefficients. A 10,000-draw sensitivity analysis that propagated Fay-BRR uncertainty in both outcome and predictor estimates increased uncertainty without changing the substantive interpretation. In exploratory component-level analyses, additional duties arising from staff absence showed the strongest negative association and remained below the within-family false-discovery-rate threshold in single and joint models. Discussion The findings distinguish broad organizational pressures from specific operational burdens. The aggregate evidence is directionally consistent but uncertain, and the staff-absence result is exploratory; neither supports individual-level or causal claims.
Source: Frontiers in Education
Institution: Universidad Salvadoreña Alberto Masferrer
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,353
OpenAlex ID: W7204448172