Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1987

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Major Professor

Joyce E. A. Russell

Committee Members

Jack Larsen, John Lounsbury, Mike Rush

Abstract

There has recently been an increasing interest concerning the work-nonwork interface. In general, however, the research has tended to overemphasize the study of the impact of the work domain on the family, rather than also looking at how the family affects the work domain. Also, the research has focused on the study of the problems women have integrating work and family, with less attention devoted to understanding the difficulties men may experience. In addition, the research has often been simplistic in nature by assuming direct causal relationships without studying intervening and underlying variables. The purpose in this study was to extend the literature by exploring the impact of family domain antecedents on the work domain for both women and men, and by examining the relationship between role pressure and perceived work/family conflict. In addition, moderating variables and individual difference variables were studied to determine their influence on the work/family conflict process.

The sample consisted of 156 employees holding full-time administrative or support positions in the systems-wide administration at a large southeastern university. All participants were either spouses and/or parents.

A survey questionnaire was used to collect data. The survey was designed to measure time-based (number and ages of children, dual-career couple status, number of hours worked by the spouse) and strain-based (family conflict, spouse support, quality of the parent and spouse experience) family domain antecedents, role pressure, work/family conflict (time-, strain-, and behavior-based conflict), cognitive complexity, role expectation congruity, and work and family involvement.

Role pressure, role expectation congruity, and behavior-based conflict were new measures developed specifically for this study. The role pressure measure was developed to measure the frequency with which the family domain impacted on the work domain. This was an attempt to measure actual objective pressure separate from the subjective evaluation of whether or not conflict was perceived as a result of the role pressure. The role expectation congruity measure was developed to give an indication of how similar the individual perceived the role expectations to be for their family role versus their work role. The behavior-based conflict measure was developed to measure the compatibility of the actual behaviors expected of the individual in their work and family roles. This was an attempt to tap a behavioral dimension of work/family conflict separate from the time-based conflict measure which gave an indication of role overload, and the strain-based conflict measure which indicated strain created in one role interfering with performance in another role.

Regression techniques were used to analyze the results. The data provided mixed results for the predicted relationships among the variables studied. In terms of the time-based antecedents, nvimber of children in the three age groups (younger than 7, between 7 and 12, and older than 12) appeared to be important in predicting role pressure and work/family conflict for women. For men, dual-career couple status was related to role pressure.

Considering the strain-based antecedents, spouse support was positively related to role pressure but negatively related to behavior-based conflict (role pressure was not related to behavior-based conflict) for men, illustrating a paradoxical relationship. None of the other strain-based antecedents were related to role pressure. In general, the strain-based antecedents appeared to be related to strainand behavior-based conflict, but not as much to time-based conflict. Family conflict appeared to be the most robust variable in the study; it was consistently related to all three of the work/family conflict variables.

Role pressure seemed to contribute most to explaining the conflict variables when role expectation congruity was analyzed with it as a moderating variable. The role pressure - role expectation congruity moderation model significantly predicted both strain- and behavior-based conflict.

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