The major purpose of this investigation was to examine the clustering of eighteen items of job characteristics of students and graduates of the teacher preparation program at Iowa State University. The study was based on longitudinal research data collected by the Research Institute for Studies in Education at Iowa State University of students enrolled in a beginning teacher course (Education 204) and graduates of the teacher education program at various stages in their careers (graduation from the teacher preparation program, one year following graduation and five years following graduation). The variables selected for this study included gender, teaching status, teaching level, and perceptions of the importance of the job characteristics items. Factor analysis was used to form composites of the eighteen job characteristics items, reliability was used to examine how reliable each composite was, and t-test of independent means was used to test differences in means between subgroups (gender, teaching status, and teaching level) of job characteristics factors;Factor analysis produced seven different factors from the various samples and subgroups. The reliability of the factors ranged from.55 to.87 with a average item correlation ranging from.37 to.60 for the various samples and subgroups. T-test of independent means found there were few or no differences in preferences for job characteristics factors by gender. However, the same did not hold true for teaching status and teaching level in preferences for job characteristics factors.