A Quantitative Study of U.S. Federal Government Senior Executive Online Learning Satisfaction, Job Satisfaction, and Turnover Intent

The U.S. federal government's Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) Senior Executive Service (SES) is losing institutional knowledge at a rapid pace due mostly to baby boomer retirements. To retain as much knowledge as possible, the OPM must identify means and methods that extend the current senior executive knowledge base and quickly develop follow-on executives. The current SES professional self-development program is inadequate to meet OPM's strategic goal of educating and training all SES executives. Despite numerous studies that explore online learning satisfaction, job satisfaction, and turnover intent, no established relationship between online learning satisfaction and turnover intent exists. The following research was based on the adult learning theories of constructivism, andragogy, heutagogy, and connectivism which provides the theoretical framework. The purpose of this study was the examination of online learning satisfaction and turnover intent of U.S. federal government SES executives to determine if there is a significant relationship between online learning satisfaction with respect to age, career or non-career status, management or non-management posting, length of service, and turnover intent. This quantitative, nonexperimental, multiple linear regression, study used the 2011 SES survey, a secondary data source, conducted by the OPM ( n = 4,954). The results of the multiple linear regression analysis provided support to reject the null hypothesis for hypotheses 1 (turnover intent), 2 (age), and 5 (management posting percent) showing that these independent variables had a statistically significant relationship with online learning satisfaction. Further, the analysis supported accepting the null hypothesis for hypothese 3 (career status) and 7 (length of service) showing that these independent variables had no statistically significant relationship with online learning satisfaction. Future quantitative research of OPM agencies' online learning satisfaction and turnover intent is recommended due to the relative lack of overall OPM research.