There have been a number of advocates of the need for conducting regular job satisfaction surveys in Britain. In fact this type of information has been collected by the General Household survey since 1971; a question on overall job satisfaction has been asked from that date, with supplementary questions on specific aspects or facets of job satisfaction being asked since 1974. However, this source of job satisfaction information has been a much under‐utilised research resource, with relatively little use being made of even the basic tabulations, much less has there been any detailed multi‐variate analysis of the responses obtained. One recent exception to this was a research paper prepared by the Department of Employment which sought, among other things, to explain why the General Household Survey responses have continually shown women reporting more satisfaction with their pay than men, despite their considerbale lower earnings levels.