The investigation was designed to study variations in organizational commitment and job satisfaction, as each related to subsequent turnover among a sample of recently employed psychiatric technician trainees. The analysis took the form of a longitudinal study across a 10 and a half month period, with attitude measures collected at four points. It was found that, for this sample, job satisfaction measures were better able to differentiate future stayers from leavers in the earliest phase of the study. However, with the passage of time, organizational commitment measures proved to be a better predictor of turnover, while job satisfaction failed to predict turnover in these later time periods. These findings are discussed in the light of other related studies on the topic, and possible explanations for such findings are examined.
