Findings presented in this article are based on a sample of 658 staff members who completed questionnaires and/or interviews.⁽³⁾ Only 8.6% of those available for interviews refused to participate in the study. An additional 4.6% failed to attend on the day when interviewers visited their work sites. This represents a very high rate of response to the survey. Most staff members were more than willing to take part and showed a great deal of interest in the objectives of the research.

The sampling procedure for the project was designed in conjunction with the Statistical Consultation Centre of Carleton University. The design was based on the Correctional Service of Canada's staff population of 10,500, although senior managers were excluded from the survey. The design team made certain that the five regions and the various occupational groups within the organization (correctional officers, support staff, etc.) were well represented in the sample. All participants were selected randomly by computer.

Reflecting the demographic profile of our staff, the majority of participants were male (63.9%) and about one third (32.9%) were French-speaking. The average age of respondents was 40.2 years. About 33% had completed high school or less, and about 30% had a university degree. About half of those surveyed had been working with the Correctional Service of Canada for five-to-nine years, approximately one quarter for less than five years, and one quarter for 10 years or more.

The staff commitment project used a number of measures to assess staff attitudes toward correctional work and orientations toward offenders. We examined attitudes among staff members who work with offenders: correctional officers, case-management officers, institutional line staff,⁽⁴⁾ professionals (e.g., psychologists, teachers, nursing staff) and correctional supervisory staff. In general, correctional employees in the Correctional Service of Canada have a positive view of working in corrections, and hold positive attitudes toward the clientele with whom they work.

Very few correctional staff members who participated felt ashamed to tell people that they worked in the field of corrections. Only 22% agreed with the statement "Usually I am not very proud to tell people that I earn my living working with criminals." Most believed that correctional work was a good career choice. Seventy-three percent of staff who responded to the questionnaire agreed that: "In general, there are more good things than bad things about having a career in corrections."

There were interesting results concerning staff attitudes toward the way correctional work is conducted. For example, most participants were forward thinking about correctional work in that they would be open to new ideas for improving their work with offenders. Only 13% endorsed the belief that "there is only one way to work with offenders and new ideas will not make any difference in this line of work." Another indicator of their attitudes toward correctional careers concerned their "human service" orientation; 83% of those surveyed who work with offenders said they "prefer a job that gives me the opportunity to help people solve their problems."

In general, positive attitudes toward offenders followed positive attitudes toward the field of corrections. In particular, correctional staff appeared to endorse a rehabilitative rather than custodial attitude toward offenders. For example, only 14% of staff surveyed held the view that "rehabilitation of adult criminals just does not work." Although some staff members were unsure about its effectiveness (22%), the majority (64%) supported the theory that rehabilitation does work.

Table 1 provides more specific figures relating to issues of rehabilitation and custody. Again, the majority of participants held optimistic views about rehabilitation and appeared willing to contribute to this enterprise.

We used the 15-item Organizational Commitment Questionnaire to measure the levels of commitment of Correctional Service of Canada staff.5 This questionnaire has been used in a number of studies by various types of organizations. Commitment can be interpreted as reflecting feelings of loyalty and pride toward an organization, agreement with its goals and values, willingness to exert extra effort to make the organization successful and a desire to maintain employment within the organization. Each of the 15 questionnaire items contain a statement about commitment. The respondent rates his or her commitment level using a seven-point rating scale. The scores for all 15 items are then combined, and an average commitment score ranging from one to seven is calculated.

Figure 1 shows the average commitment scores of our sample. Only a small proportion of participants fell within the low-commitment extreme. Almost one third were in the middle category, perhaps sitting on the fence between low and high commitment, while about 42% were in the higher range of commitment to the Correctional Service of Canada.

• 76% of staff said they were "willing to put in a great deal of effort beyond that normally expected in order to help this organization be successful";
• 54% said they were "proud to tell others that I am part of this organization";
• 37% said that "this organization really inspires the very best in me in the way of job performance"; and only 9% said that "deciding to work for this organization was a definite mistake."

When compared to the results of the large public service survey of six federal departments in which an abbreviated version of the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire was used, it can be seen that, in general, the levels of commitment in the Correctional Service of Canada are comparable to other departments. As shown in Figure 2, however, a slightly larger proportion of Correctional Service of Canada respondents fell within the high-commitment category, and within the low-commitment category. These differences in distribution result in a smaller proportion of correctional staff who are categorized in the middle-commitment group.

Commitment Study was to provide greater understanding of how commitment among correctional staff is influenced. We asked what factors might account for why some staff members are more committed than others, and discovered that a variety of factors came into play. As we have seen above, higher commitment was associated with not working directly with offenders. Other factors included length of service (newer staff members were more committed), gender (females were more committed), having positive attitudes toward the field of corrections, having a desire to work with people, being open to change, having career-development goals and plans, feeling that the organization was open and flexible about new ideas and reporting a low level of job stress. Job stressors that were more closely associated with lower commitment included vague complaints about management and feeling that inmates were stressful (e.g., day-to-day relations with inmates were a source of irritation or annoyance).

Because some factors had stronger influences on commitment levels than others, we conducted analyses to determine the relative importance of the various factors.6 The most important factors were, in descending order:

• having positive attitudes toward the
• field of corrections; viewing the organization as open and flexible;
• having a career-development orientation; and
• reporting lower levels of work stress.

Having positive attitudes toward corrections was by far the most important factor that emerged from the analyses. It appears that strong commitment is much more likely to be expressed by people who like the field of corrections and the work involved.

The above factors suggest two areas of influence on commitment. One refers to external sources whereby the personal characteristics of staff members have a favourable influence on commitment, such as having positive attitudes toward corrections and possessing a career orientation. The other factors are more internal and may be controlled more easily by the organization, for example, the way work is structured, work-related stress and communication and openness within the organization.

There were some interesting differences when we looked at factors that influenced commitment across different occupational groups. Because of the lower commitment levels we observed in staff members who worked directly with offenders, we examined the case-manager and correctional-officer groups more closely.

For both groups, positive attitudes toward corrections was again the most critical commitment factor. However, we found that the importance of other factors varied between the two groups. For example, the second most important factor for correctional officers was endorsement of rehabilitation. The third most important factor for this group was complaints about management - correctional officers who complained about management were less likely to be committed. For case-management officers, career-development orientation was the second most important factor, followed by the perception that the Correctional Service of Canada was open and flexible concerning new ideas.

Differences in the importance of commitment factors across occupational categories should help us select strategies for increasing commitment among groups of staff that show particularly low levels of commitment. More detailed analyses of the data should provide further clues as to how we can help specific groups of staff become more engaged in their work.

The broader survey of Canadian federal public service departments suggested that many public servants experience a great deal of stress, which they attribute to their work. The results of our study led to similar conclusions.

There are a number of methods used to assess stress in work populations, including measures of health and emotional well-being, subjective reports of stress symptoms and reports of feeling stressed or burned out. In our study, we asked respondents, by way of questionnaire items, to rate the level of day-to-day stress they experience in the course of doing their job. In addition, interviewers asked the participants to talk about the types of stress they experienced in an effort to gain a greater understanding of what factors in our workplace contribute to feelings of stress. After conducting their interviews, researchers rated the level of stress they observed in those interviewed.

The results were interesting. Table 2 shows the responses we received to questionnaire items concerning stress.⁽⁷⁾ About half of the respondents agreed that they experienced some degree of stress in conducting their work.

Interviewers asked staff participants a number of questions about their career plans in the Correctional Service of Canada, what they were doing about their plans and what the organization could do to help them. In particular, respondents were asked where they would like to be in their career path five years from now.

About 7.5% of the respondents said that retirement within the next five years was their major career goal. Another 14.8% felt that they would like to work outside the organization within five years. Hence, close to 80% of staff interviewed planned to remain employed with the organization in the foreseeable future.

By asking if they had applied for a position outside the organization in the last six months, we were able to gain some understanding of the equivalence between outside aspirations and concrete steps taken to fulfill those aspirations. About 37% of those who had outside ambitions had applied for jobs in other organizations in the last six months. While some staff members may be delaying their exit from the organization, it is possible that many of those who hope to leave will not take steps to turn that hope into reality.

Of the participants who said they intended to remain with the Correctional Service of Canada, a minority felt that they would be content to do the same job for the next five years. About 26% of the "stayers" said they wanted to do the same job, while about 4.8% said they would like lateral transfers (e.g., to a new institution) and 9.6% said they would like a lateral transfer that involved a different type of job within the department. Almost half of respondents, or 44.3%, said they would like to be promoted in the next five years. This included some staff members who said they also had aspirations to pursue careers outside the organization. Thirty-five percent of those interviewed who were seeking a promotion said they wanted to be promoted to management.

When we looked at the desire for promotion by occupational category, we found only slight differences across the 10 staff groups. Figure 6 shows the proportion of staff members in each group who wanted promotions and the proportion who planned to pursue careers outside of the organization. The community case-management group had the highest proportion of staff with career aspirations that did not include the Correctional Service of Canada. The figure also shows that staff belonging to the professional, community case-management and institutional line-staff groups had the lowest levels of aspirations for promotion. Correctional supervisory staff and middle managers exhibited the highest levels. About 44% of correctional officers, which is the largest occupational group in the organization, hoped for promotion. Again, differences in proportions of staff members who wanted to stay with the organization and receive promotions did not vary a great deal across the major occupational groupings.