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Professional role complexity and job satisfaction of collegiate certified athletic trainers.

CONTEXT
Whenever professionals have multiple role obligations in the workplace, they face potential professional role complexities.


OBJECTIVE
To examine whether certified athletic trainers (ATs) employed at the collegiate level experienced professional role complexities, and if so, what effect those complexities had upon their job satisfaction and intent to leave a current position or the profession.


DESIGN
Survey.


SETTING
We used Internet survey methods to gather information from 1000 randomly selected collegiate ATs regarding the amount of stress they felt due to role complexities.


PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS
We obtained a random sample of e-mail addresses for 1000 collegiate ATs in the United States and contacted these individuals with an invitation to participate. A total of 348 usable responses were received, for a 36% response rate.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S)
The role complexity aspect of the survey consisted of 45 questions addressing role ambiguity, role overload, role incongruity, role incompetence, and role conflict. The job satisfaction portion consisted of global questions regarding overall job satisfaction and intent to leave the job or profession.


RESULTS
A total of 38% of respondents experienced moderate to high stress levels from role overload, whereas 23% and 22% had moderate to high levels of stress from role ambiguity and role conflict, respectively. Clinicians and joint appointees who reported moderate to high levels of stress from role complexity issues had lower job satisfaction and more frequent thoughts of leaving than did their faculty counterparts.


CONCLUSIONS
The majority of collegiate ATs experienced low levels of professional role complexities and were relatively satisfied with their jobs. However, collegiate ATs began to experience less job satisfaction and more thoughts of leaving when moderate to high stress levels occurred due to role ambiguity, overload, incongruity, incompetence, and conflict. Lessening the stress due to role complexities is critical to positive employment experiences for ATs employed in higher education.