PROCESS,

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PROCESS,
PROCESS,
PROCESS

• Rosalind Chait Barnett, Ph.D.
• Womens Studies Research Center
• Brandeis University

02/08/02
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TWO MAIN THEMES
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1. End of the Tyranny of Main Effects
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NEGATIVE/POSITIVE FAMILY/QOL OUTCOMES
WORK HOURS
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• This movement is consistent with Bronfenbrenners
  and Crouters (1982) observation that the study
  of main effects alone

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involve(s) a leap from the very start of the
causal process directly to the outcome, leaving
everything in between to the imagination (p.71).
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We need to go beyond the study of main effects.
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2. Focus on Subjective Not Just
Objective Indicators
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• Need to focus on role quality
• as opposed to role occupancy.

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• This focus is in line with the
• call for research that examines

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the meaning men and women assign to their roles
as parents, workers, and marital partners
(Perry-Jenkins, Repetti, Crouter, 2000, p. 990,
italics added).
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LIMITATIONS OF THE FOCUS ON MAIN EFFECTS
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Long Work Hours
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Positive Outcomes

• High role balance
• Good physical health
• Low psychological distress

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Negative Outcomes

• High experienced job demands
• High emotional exhaustion
• High marital tension

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Unrelated to Many QOL Outcomes

• Life satisfaction
• Marital-role quality
• Job-role quality
• Intention to turnover
• Psychological distress

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A NEW MODEL
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Address the processes by which work and family
affect one another.
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Address the processes by which work and family
affect one another. Acknowledge that work or
family conditions do not lead inevitably to
particular work, family, and QOL outcomes.
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Address the processes by which work and family
affect one another. Acknowledge that work or
family conditions do not lead inevitably to
particular work, family, and QOL
outcomes. Conceptualize the circumstances under
which work or family conditions increase or
decrease the likelihood of particular outcomes.
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MODERATORS AND MEDIATORS
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Moderators

• Variables that affect the magnitude and/or
  direction of the relationship between social
  roles and outcomes

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MODERATOR
WORK CONDITIONS
FAMILY/QOL OUTCOMES
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Mediators

• Variables through which social roles have an
  effect

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WORK CONDITIONS
MEDIATOR
FAMILY/QOL OUTCOMES
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Womens Health-Care Professionals Study
Participants

• Random sample of 98 married female MDs
• Dual-earner couples
• At least one child under 14 at home
• Stratified on work schedule
• Full-time versus reduced hours
• Stratified on race

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Procedures

• Each participant was
• interviewed by a trained interviewer at a time
  and place of convenience to the participant.
• interviewed face-to-face for one hour.
• given a brief questionnaire to complete in
  advance of the interview.
• given 25 for her participation.

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Final Sample

• 51 full-time female MDs
• 25 Minority
• 26 White
• 47 reduced-hours female MDs
• 14 Minority
• 33 White

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SCHEDULE FIT AS A MEDIATOR
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Schedule Fit

• How well her own and her partners work
  arrangements (i.e., number and distribution of
  work hours) meet the needs of her family system.

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Results
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Schedule fit mediates the relationship between
work hours and burnout.
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For example, when schedule fit was added to a
regression model including work hours, the sign
of the beta for work hours changed such that long
work hours was associated with low rather than
high burnout.
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In other words, it is not possible to know the
direction of the relationship between work hours
and burnout without knowing whether schedule fit
is good or poor.
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LOW-SCHEDULE- CONTROL HOUSEHOLD TASKS AS A
MEDIATOR
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Low-Schedule-Control Household Tasks
Tasks, such as meal preparation and clean-up,
that cannot be scheduled in response to ones
personal needs
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High-Schedule-Control Household Tasks
Tasks, such as yard work, that can be done at a
time that suits ones preference and availability
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Research Question
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• Does time spent in low-schedule-control household
  tasks mediate the relationship between work hours
  and marital-role quality?

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LOW-SCHEDULE- CONTROL HOUSEHOLD TASKS
MARITAL- ROLE QUALITY
WORK HOURS
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Results
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• In a regression model without low-schedule-control
  household tasks, long work hours was
  significantly associated with high marital-role
  quality.

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• When time in low-schedule-control household tasks
  was entered into the model
• It was a significant and negative predictor of
  marital quality.
• It reduced the relationship between work
  hours and marital quality.

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The more time these female doctors spent in such
tasks, the lower their marital quality.
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Not surprisingly, reduced-hours doctors spent
significantly more time in such tasks than their
full-time employed peers.
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Full-time female doctors reports of high
marital-role quality are due, in part, to their
spending relatively little time in
low-schedule-control household tasks.
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In contrast, reduced-hours female doctors report
relatively poorer marital-role quality, in part,
because they do more such tasks than their
full-time counterparts.
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Thus, the impact of work hours on the marital
quality of female doctors in dual-earner couples
with young children cannot be determined without
knowing how these doctors spend their non-work
time.
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PERCEIVED JOB DEMANDS AS A MODERATOR
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In this analysis, parent-role quality is the
predictor.
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Research Question
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Does the relationship between parent-role
quality and psychological distress depend on
perceived job demands?
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PERCEIVED JOB DEMANDS
PARENT-ROLE QUALITY
PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS
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Results
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The relationship between parent-role quality and
psychological distress varies with perceived job
demands.
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When perceived job demands are low, the
relationship between parent-role quality and
psychological distress is unaffected.
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When perceived job demands are high, there is a
negative relationship between parent-role quality
and psychological distress.
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Good relationships with their young children
buffered these female doctors from the distress
they would otherwise have experienced when
perceived job demands are high.
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Another way of summarizing these findings is to
say that when parent-role quality is good, there
is no association between perceived job demands
and psychological distress, whereas when
parent-role quality is poor, there is a positive
relationship between perceived job demands and
psychological distress.
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In sum, progress in understanding the linkages
between work and family depends on developing
models of indirect as well as direct
relationships.
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These indirect effects shed light on the critical
processes through which work and family affect
one another.
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The focus on process

• Identifies the circumstances under which work or
  family conditions affect the likelihood of
  particular outcomes.
• Holds the promise of clarifying inconsistencies
  in the work/family literature.