Do Respondents Who Pen Comments Onto Mail Surveys Differ From Other Respondents? A Research Note on the Human Services Job Satisfaction Literature

A current study has criticized the human services job satisfaction literature for relying solely on information obtained by closed-ended questionnaires. Stating that these studies may not accurately reflect the actual conditions under which public welfare employees function, the authors base their criticisms on an analysis of the extemporaneous comments of subjects participating in a national study. Nonetheless, whether or not those who pen comments are representative of the broader population of human service workers remains an open question. The study reported in this article sought to shed light on this issue by comparing respondents who commented versus those who did not. Findings indicate that the two groups are quite similar although some differences were observed