Karen C. Gareis

Fit as a mediator of the relationship between work hours and burnout

The authors studied number of hours worked and estimated its relationship to burnout in a nonrandom sample of 141 married physicians. It was hypothesized that this relationship is mediated by a process called fit, conceptualized as the extent to which workers realize the various components of their work-family strategies. Results of structural equation modeling supported the mediation hypothesis. Employees whose work hours are more or fewer than they and their partner prefer and whose work hours are distributed differently than they and their partner prefer will be more disengaged, distracted, and alienated at work than will their counterparts who are working their preferred schedules. Thus, the relationship between number of hours worked and burnout depends on the extent to which work schedules meet the needs of the worker, her or his partner, and their children, if any.

Reduced-Hours Employment The Relationship Between Difficulty of Trade-Offs and Quality of Life

Although reduced-hours work is widely thought to decrease distress, empirical literature relating absolute number of hours worked to distress outcomes is inconsistent. Perhaps the trade-off between giving up some aspects of work for more nonwork time is more stressful for some employees than for others. The authors tested the hypothesis that difficulty of trade-offs is a more powerful predictor of quality-of-life indicators (i.e., symptoms of anxiety and depression, job-role quality, and intention to turnover within 1 year) than is number of hours worked per se in a non-random sample of 141 reduced-hours physicians in dual-earner couples. Results supported the hypothesis.

Planning ahead: College seniors concerns about career-marriage conflict

Career–marriage conflict (CMC) reflects the reality that for many college seniors, the next decade oftheir lives will be spent launching a career, of ten a very demanding one, building a long-term romantic relationship, and coordinating the demands oftwo careers. We f on the antecedents and correlates ofthese concerns. Based on social-role theory, we hypothesized that seniors whose mothers worked outside the home while the seniors were children would express less concern about CMC than seniors with at-home mothers. We also hypothesized that seniors expectations about the timing oftheir marriages and childbearing relate to their concerns about CMC, with students who plan to delay family formation having fewer CMC concerns. These hypotheses were supported through an analysis ofsecondary data f rom a

Characteristics and Outcomes for Women Physicians Who Work Reduced Hours

OBJECTIVES To understand the characteristics of women physicians who work reduced hours in dual-earner couples and how such work schedules affect the quality of the marital role, parental role, and job role, as well as indicators of psychological distress, burnout, career satisfaction, and life satisfaction. METHODS Survey of a random sample of female physicians between 25 and 50 years of age, working within 25 miles of Boston, whose names were obtained from the Registry of Board Certification in Medicine in Massachusetts. Interviewers conducted a 60-minute face-to-face close-ended interview after a 20-minute mailed questionnaire had been completed. RESULTS Fifty-one full-time physicians and 47 reduced-hours physicians completed the study, for a completion rate of 49.5%. There was no difference in age, number of years as a physician, mean household income, number of children, or presence of an infant in the home between reduced-hours and full-time physicians. Reduced-hours physicians, however, were more likely to be in a generalist specialty (40% vs. 12%, p = 0.001) and to spend a greater portion of their time in patient care (64.5% vs. 50.1%, p = 0.003) and less time in research (4.9% vs. 18.0%, p = 0.002) than full-time physicians. In addition, there was no difference between the two groups in the perception of work interfering with family life (1.8 vs. 1.7, p = 0.17; scale 1-7 with 7 high) or family life interfering with work (1.4 vs. 1.5, p = 0.62). Physicians who worked their preferred number of hours (25% of full-time and 57% of reduced-hours physicians), regardless of full-time (self-reported hours 35-90 hours per week) or reduced-hours (20-60 hours per week) status, reported better job role quality (r = 0.35, p = 0.001), schedule fit (r = 0.41, p < or = 0.001), lower burnout (r = -0.22, p = 0.03), better marital role quality (r = 0.28, p = 0.006), and higher life satisfaction (r = 0.29, p = 0.005). CONCLUSIONS Women physicians who work their preferred number of hours achieve the best balance of work and family outcomes.

Under What Conditions Do Long Work Hours Affect Psychological Distress?: A Study of Full-time and Reduced-hours Female Doctors

In a random sample of 98 full-time and reduced-hours female doctors in dual-earner couples with at least one child younger than 14, the authors ask whether objective work hours or perceived job demands better predict psychological distress and whether work hours or parent-role quality moderate the relationship between perceived job demands and psychological distress. Neither work hours nor perceived job demands predicted psychological distress, but another subjective indicator, schedule fit, did. Support was also found for family-related interaction effects; that is, good relationships with children buffered mothers from the negative effects that perceived job demands might otherwise have on psychological distress.

Full-time and reduced-hours work schedules and marital quality: A study of female physicians with young children

In this stratified random sample of 98 married full-time and reduced-hours female physicians with children, the authors tested the hypothesis that the relationship between work hours and marital-role quality would be mediated by the proportion of low-schedule-control household tasks performed by the physicians. The hypothesis was supported: Physicians working longer hours reported higher marital-role quality than those working fewer hours to the extent that they performed fewer low-schedule-control household tasks than did their reduced-hours counter-parts. Conversely, reduced-hours physicians, who, on average, performed more low-schedule-control tasks, reported lower marital-role quality.

Reconsidering work time: a multivariate longitudinal within-couple analysis

Dual-earner couples now work significantly more hours than in the past, but few couple-level studies examine whether work hours are linked to mental health and quality-of-life outcomes. In 2001, Jacobs and Gerson proposed that combined spouse work hours would better predict outcomes than would spouses’ individual work hours. Longitudinal data from a random sample of 211 dual-earner couples with children partially support this hypothesis. Our findings suggest that future research on dual-earner couples’ work hours should be couple-level and longitudinal, estimate both linear and non-linear relationships, and include multiple positive and negative outcomes as well as subjective indicators of the meaning of work hours.

The development of a new measure for work-family research: Community resource fit

We describe the development and validation of a quantitative measure of community resource fit; i.e., satisfaction with the extent to which community resources meet the needs of working families of school-aged children. The measure has good psychometric properties, and preliminary results suggest that the measure warrants further study. The measure is composed of six moderately intercorrelated subscales assessing resource fit in the areas of work, public transportation, school, school transportation, after-school programs and after-school transportation resources. We found interesting patterns of results linking community resource fit, especially in the areas of work and school resource fit, to a variety of quality-of-life and well-being outcomes among employed parents of school-aged children. These outcomes include work-to-family and family-to-work conflict and enhancement, psychological distress, job–role quality, likelihood of losing or leaving ones job and likelihood of leaving ones line of work.

Unintended consequences of job redesign

Researchers and practitioners have cited the advantage of such flexible work scheduling options as flex‐time, compressed workweeks, job sharing, and reduced hours for employees. The assumption underlying these options has been that more flexible schedules allow employees to meet their family requirements and still work a sufficient number of hours to advance in their careers. In this paper we focus on the unintended consequences of such job‐design modifications. In particular, we explore the impact of reduced‐hours career options for women in the healthcare sector. One potential consequence of reduced hours concerns the effects of violations of psychological contracts, or the beliefs that employers and employees hold regarding their mutual obligations. We test two hypotheses that state that professionals and reduced‐hours employees are more likely to express an intention to turn over when such contracts are violated. We test these hypotheses in a random sample of 178 Boston‐area married female healthcare workers who are in dual‐earner couples, who have at least one child under high‐school age, and who vary in professional status and in work schedule. The results support both hypotheses and suggest that reduced‐hours employment can have unintended consequences for employees and their organizations.

Conservation of Resources theory in the context of multiple roles: an analysis of within- and cross-role mediational pathways

Based on the Conservation of Resources theory, we used data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS I, 1995–1996; N=1779) to estimate by covariance structure analysis the direct and indirect effects of work and family demands, resources, and support on psychological distress. In a new application of the theory, we estimated six within-role mediational pathways linking work-related predictors to psychological distress through work interfering with family (WIF) and family-related predictors to psychological distress through family interfering with work (FIW). Finally, in a departure from previous work–family research, we estimated six cross-role mediational pathways linking work-related predictors to psychological distress through FIW and family-related predictors to psychological distress through WIF. Ten of the 12 hypothesized mediational effects were significant and another was marginally significant, supporting the mediational role of work–family conflict within Conservation of Resources theory.