Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nikita Pike

Date

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Psychology

Committee Chair

Randy Floyd

Committee Member

Caitlin Porter

Committee Member

Emily Srisarajivakul

Committee Member

Ryan Farmer

Abstract

Despite moderate levels of stress and burnout in their work, school psychologists in the United States tend to be satisfied with their jobs. Although researchers have addressed why school psychologists view their work as important, there is yet another important feature of the workplace that has not been examined in this population: flourishing at work. This study aimed to enhance the understanding of flourishing at work in school psychologists by examining an existing scale, the Flourishing-at-Work Scale, completed online by a national sample of United States school psychologists. Data from a sample of 369 practicing school psychologists were used in a series of exploratory factor analyses indicating a general factor of flourishing at work. Convergent and discriminant relations were evident between a total score from the Flourishing-at-Work Scale and measures reflecting job satisfaction and overall stress at work. Specifically, flourishing at work had the strongest associations with feeling satisfied with the nature of work and feeling stressed due to the heavy workload. Flourishing at work did not have statistically significant relations with gender, ethnicity, work setting, or school-psychologist-to-student ratio by state. However, flourishing at work was statistically significantly related to graduate degree, with those who obtained doctoral degrees reporting higher levels of flourishing at work compared to those who obtained education specialist degrees. This study marks an important step into examining school psychology work-related variables by highlighting their feelings of flourishing at work. More research using the Flourishing-at-Work scale is needed to further examine its factor structure with school psychologists.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest.

Notes

Open Access

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