A note on the nonlinearity of the age-job-satisfaction relationship

Research assessing the relationship between age and job satisfaction has ty pically provided mixed results. Inherent problems including limited samples and a failure to control for tenure and affective disposition have potenti ally contributed to these conflicting results. Moreover, a significant conc ern has been researchers' focus on detecting linear effects alone. In the c urrent study, we statistically controlled for gender, supervisor and positi on tenure, quadratic tenure terms, and affective disposition (NA and PA) ba sed on previous research regarding the relationship between these variables and job satisfaction. Finally, we used hierarchical polynomial regression to assess the form of the age-satisfaction relationship. Results confirmed that a U shape best characterized the relationship between age and job sati sfaction. Implications of these findings as well as directions for future r esearch are discussed.