Here you can find my project Ordered choice logit model in R
This project has been made together with LashaGoch
In our study we used data collected by Stack Overflow during the annual survey in 2018 designed for programmers. Stack Overflow is a community forum for programmers. In this forum the users are able to ask questions about their programs, and one is able to reply to them sharing his knowledge.
We will verify the following hypothesis using ordered choices logit model:
Hypothesis 1: Higher salary increases career satisfaction
In our study we will examine the relationship between salary and career satisfaction. During the career, a person changes the job from one company to another when there is a better offer. Biggest part of the offer is salary levels. When a person is satisfied with the salary, stays in the company longer and claims that she has a higher level of career satisfaction.
Hypothesis 2: Having hobby increases career satisfaction
We will describe the relationship between having hobby and career satisfaction. We think the people with hobbies are more satisfied with their career and find time to express themselves by having hobbies. Also, people who do not have hobbies are more concerned first to reach career satisfaction and then take some time for hobbies.
We modeled our data with ordered choices logit model. We created different models with different variables. Also, models with significant and insignificant variables. We applied test to check goodness-of-fit and likelihood tests, we also applied general to specific approach.
According to our final model and findings stemmed from the analysis we verified the first hypothesis. Salary variable is in thousand USD. When salary increases with 1K USD we see that people are more satisfied with career. This is normal also in real life. People are seeking financial stability. Moving from one company to another and moving up to the ladder of the career to have better financial situation. The more salary they earn it is more likely to stay in the company and to claim that you are satisfied with your career.
The second hypothesis very interesting. Our analysis proved that people who have hobby are more satisfied with career comparing with people who do not have hobby. If we take example from life, when we are satisfied with we have time to do something we are passionate about outside of our everyday work environment. For IT professionals, having hobby could be even crucial as their work could be very stressful.
Outcomes of the study may help HR strategists to define strategies that aims increase of career satisfaction among IT employees. Making clear what are the factors of salary increase could be important for career satisfaction of programmers that would lead them to be more committed to the company.
Nevertheless, there are many aspects that could further develop the study. Incorporating additional demographic and psychological variables could improve the efficiency of the model.
The main finding of this study is that the main factors that impact on career satisfaction are salary, hobby and current job satisfaction. Person that said that she is satisfied with current job, has hobby and high salary is more likely to be satisfied with career.
On the other hand, we came to conclusions that age, numbers of years spent on coding and the county does not impact career satisfaction. Programmers in different central and eastern European countries have similar results. It is also very surprising that career satisfaction is not related to the age.
There are some limitations to our study. Although our dataset contains more than 2,248 observations the data for the efficient econometric model could be larger. It would be interesting to include additional variables that have impact on career satisfaction such as demography, family status, job orientation etc. For example, people who has more decision power and have more rights at work to influence with their recommendations they are more likely to be satisfied with the career than those who do not have any decision power at work. Also, those professionals who feel more that their work is aligned to the company strategy may feel more satisfied with the career.
For future studies it is good to compare western and eastern countries. Introducing other western countries into the model we may have different outcome. We expect country variable to become more significant. Also, job orientation, managerial statuses and related variables may influence the model. In the introduction we described how strong relationship is between life satisfaction and career satisfaction. Incorporating psychological aspects to the study may have different settings of the final model.