study of the relationship between work environment variables and the intent of child care workers in southeast Florida to leave their workplace

The purpose of this study was to identity within the workplace sources of satisfaction and sources of dissatisfaction for child care workers in southeast Florida and to develop a predictive model of child care workers' intentions to leave their jobs based on selected work environment variables. The work environment variables selected as predictor variables were administration, communication, compensation, career advancement opportunity, goals and job tasks, children, co-workers, parents, and facility and supplies. The population surveyed consisted of 227 child care workers from 45 licensed child care centers in Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, Florida. Instruments used in this study were the Child Care Director Questionnaire and the Child Care Worker Questionnaire. Results of data analyses revealed a significant relationship between some of the predictor variables and child care workers' intentions to leave their jobs. The strongest correlations with intent to leave were compensation (r = -.461) and career advancement opportunity (r = -.426). The model with the greatest parsimony and ability to predict child care workers' intentions to leave their jobs included the predictor variables of compensation, career advancement opportunity, children, co-workers, facility, and communication. This model accounted for 25.6% of the variance in child care workers' intentions to leave their jobs. Compensation was identified as a source of job dissatisfaction for child care workers in southeast Florida. Administration, communication, parents, co-workers, children, career advancement opportunity, facility, and goals and job tasks were more sources of satisfaction than of dissatisfaction. More child care workers in this study (92.7%) were satisfied or very satisfied with working with children than with any other work environment variable.