Marital Satisfaction and Work-Family Conflict
The purpose of this paper is to present a proposal for a study on the topic of marital satisfaction and work-family balance. The paper presents the proposal under the subsections objective, subjects for the study, ethical considerations, measurement, data collection methods, and data analysis.
1. Objective
The concept of work-family balance refers to the assessment of the whether or not family and work resources are sufficient to satisfy both work and family demands (Voydanoff, 2005). Family and work are central social institutions in an individual’s life and both absorb considerable amounts of an individual’s time. Balancing the dual responsibilities of work and family can place a strain on marital relationships (Basu, 2016; Netemeyer, Boles & McMurrian, 1996). Research indicates that marital relationships may be sacrificed in order to fulfill work and parenting responsibilities (Claxton & Perry-Jenkins, 2008; Wight, Raley & Bianchi, 2008). Marital relationships are eroded when time spent with a spouse conflicts with work duties (Roxburgh, 2006). Further, Zimmerman, et al. (2003) determined that work-family balance is related to marital satisfaction.
In a two-year longitudinal study, Bodenmann, Pihet, and Kayser, (2006) found that dyadic coping was associated with marital quality. Thus, the relationship between marital satisfaction and work-family balance and between marital satisfaction and psychosocial factors is established. Orkibi and Brandta (2015) demonstrated the association of psychosocial factors to work-family balance. What is not well-understood is how psychosocial factors mediate marital satisfaction and work-family balance. The objective of the study proposal is to explore the associations between marital satisfaction, work-family conflict, and psychosocial factors. Specifically, the study hypothesis is that psychosocial characteristics will modify the relationship between marital satisfaction and work-family conflict.
2. Study Participants
2.1 Sampling considerations
A simple stratified random sampling strategy will be applied to recruit 500 couples. The population will be members of five urban universities stratified by first by occupation and then by age. University communities are chosen as the population because they offer a variety of occupations are required to maintain a universities, for examples, groundskeepers, students, administrators, and faculty. Five universities are chosen to ensure that a sufficient number of couples can be recruited.
A stratified sample has been chosen as an effort to ensure that sufficient numbers of participants are recruited across the demographic categories. Also, the findings will be more convincing and meaningful if roughly equal numbers are included in all the strata. The reason for the stratification by occupation is that the some of the occupations, i.e. faculty or senior administrators, may have fewer members. The occupations within the university community are: students, junior administrators, faculty, maintenance, technical staff (e.g. computer programmers), and senior administrators.
The age stratum is included because the mean age of the students is likely to be younger than the employees of the university. A reasonable number of individuals over the age of 35 years are required because it increases the chances they will have been involved in the same relationship for a longer period of time. The age strata are under age 35 and over age 35.
Fifty employees from each campus will be randomly selected by student ID and employee ID numbers. Invitations to participate will be sent by campus mail to the potential participants. The invitation will include a description of the study, eligibility criteria, and contact information. It is anticipated that there will be individuals who do not fit the eligibility criteria and therefore do not respond. If the potential participant does not respond within a month, another ID number will be randomly selected. Recruiting will continue until 500 eligible couples have accepted the invitation to participate. In addition to the strata mentioned above, an attempt will be made to recruit subjects in equal numbers in the following relevant demographic categories: education (up to High School, attended university as an undergraduate, and attended university as a graduate student, e household income per annum (under 40,000, 40.000 to 75,000, and over 75,000), length of partnership (less than 5 years, 5 to 10 years, and over 10 years).
2.2 Participant criteria
The inclusion criteria are that the university employee be over the age of 18, in a stable relationship for at least three years and be cohabiting with their partner. There is no restriction as to whether the relationship is heterosexual or homosexual or whether the couple are married or not. Both members of the partnership will be engaged in paid work for at least 30 hours a week outside the home or be enrolled as a full time student.
3. Ethical Considerations
The proposal will be reviewed for ethical issues by the Institutional Review Board of the university. In the initial interview, participants will be required to read and sign an informed consent form. The form will advise the participant that their involvement in the study is voluntary, they may withdraw at any time without a penalty, and all their answers will be kept confidential. The form includes contact information of the participants. Included on the form is a description of the study, the anticipated number of participants, and researcher contact information should the participant have additional questions about their rights as a participant or about the study. The form includes a section that allows the participants to indicate whether they would like to receive a summary of the study findings. The participants are advised that each couple will receive $20.00 for their participation, which will be delivered upon completion of the battery of tests. A further benefit to the participant is in knowing that they contributed to a study that adds to the body of literature on relationship stability.
Couples are given a study identification number that is in the sequence in which they enrolled in the study. The informed consent form is the only recording of the link between the name of the participants and their identification number. The informed consent form will be kept in a locked drawer away from all the other study data. All other study data related to the participants will use only the identification number. All study data is aggregated in an SPSS database so that upon publication of the results, no identification numbers will be traceable to an identification number.
There is no deceit involved in the instructions for the test battery. The only harm that could come to the participants would be boredom when completing the battery of tests or psychological discomfort in revealing information about their marriage. All tests are in a self-report format so there is no face-to-face disclosure of personal information.
4. Data Collection Methods
All couples will receive an initial interview to ensure eligibility. Demographic data will be collected at this point. The relevant demographic data are age, sex, length of partnership, annual household income, education level, number of children living at home, and occupation. A question on ethnicity will be included in order to account for cultural differences in marital expectations, i. e. with what ethnicity do you most identify. The participant will tick the appropriate box from among, for instance, Black, White, South Asian, Asian, Latino.
Information as to whether the relationship is heterosexual or homosexual will be taken as same sex couples are likely to face additional social challenges that could affect the dynamics of the relationship. The instruments used to collect data are a work-family balance questionnaire, marital satisfaction questionnaire, and a psychosocial questionnaire.
After all the demographic data have been gathered each participant will be handed an envelope containing the entire test battery and shown to a quiet area where they can complete the battery of tests. Only one participant will be allowed in the quiet area at a time. The participants will be requested to not share the information about the test battery with anyone that has not already taken the test battery, including their partner. The reason for the need to keep the information private is to decrease the chances of influencing each other.
5. Measurement
5.1 Work-family balance questionnaire
Although much academic interest has been demonstrated in work-family balance, little attention has been paid to developing a scale to measure the concept. Milkie and Peltola (1999) developed a single question, “How successful do you feel at balancing your paid work and your family life,” which was later used in other studies, e.g. Keene and Quadagno (2004). As work family balance and work family balance measure slightly different constructs, Allen, Greenhaus, and Edwards (2010) developed a three-item scale that distinguished between work-family balance and work family conflict. The three items have a 5-point range from strongly agree to strongly disagree and assess: (1) the ability to achieve a work family balance, (2) satisfaction with the work family balance, and (3) level of work family balance.
5.2 Couple satisfaction
Couples’ satisfaction with their relationship is assessed by the Kansas Marital Satisfaction scale (Schumm, Nichols, Schectman, & Grinsby, 1983). Graham, Diebels & Barnow (2011) conducted a reliability generalization meta-analysis on seven frequently-used tools for relationship satisfaction. The authors determined that the Kansas Marital Satisfaction scale was the strongest overall measure of couple satisfaction. The Kansas Marital Satisfaction scale is a three-item tool that directly measures satisfaction with the relationship. Participants describe their relative satisfaction with their spouse, relationship and marriage on a 7-point Likert scale. For the purposes of this study, the words spouse and marriage will be changed to partner and partnership, respectively. The Kansas Marital Satisfaction scale is able to distinguish between stressed and non-stressed partners and has demonstrated good construct validity (Crane, Middleton & Bean, 2000; Schumm, Crock, Likcani, Akagi, & Bosch, 2008).
5.3 Psychosocial factors
Dyadic Coping Questionnaire
The Dyadic Coping Questionnaire was developed initially in German by Bodenmann (2000). It is a 55-item scale that assesses the coping and communication strategies used by the members of the dyad under stressful conditions. The questionnaire covers six subscales: stress communication (5 items), supportive dyadic coping by the person completing the questionnaire (13 items), supportive dyadic coping by the other member of the couple (13 items), common dyadic coping (10 items), negative dyadic coping by the member of the couple completing the questionnaire (4 items), and negative coping by the other member of the couple. The validity and reliability of the Dyadic Coping questionnaire was established by Bodenmann (2000) and Donato, et al. (2009). The questionnaire has been translated into several languages and has been used extensive by Bodenmann and colleagues.
Depression and anxiety scales
Depression and anxiety scales are included in the study in order to assess the impact of relative levels of depression and anxiety on the association of work family balance, couple satisfaction, and dyadic coping. Depression and anxiety can skew other measures negatively and the inclusion of the anxiety and depression scales helps to control for these psychosocial factors. The Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, Ward, Henderson, Mock, & Erbaugh, 1961) and Beck Inventory Scale (Beck, Epstein, Brown & Steer, 1988) have been used extensively for decades for both clinical and nonclinical populations.
6. Data Analysis
Data will be entered into SPSS for statistical analyses. The data analyses will be conducted to determine the factors that predict couple satisfaction. The dependent variable is couple satisfaction, which is operationalized as test scores on the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale. The independent variables are the degree of work family balance, and the psychosocial factors Dyadic Coping Questionnaire, Beck Depression, and Beck Anxiety tests. The following demographic variables from the initial interview will be loaded into SPSS: age, sex, occupation, length of relationship, campus, household income. Test scores from the Work-Family Balance questions used by Allen, Greenhaus, and Edwards (2010), the Kansas Marital Satisfaction, Dyadic Coping Questionnaire, Beck Depression, and Beck Anxiety tests for each individual will be input into the SPSS database.
Once all the data is input, data cleaning will take place. Data cleaning will be done by conducting frequencies on all the variables in order to identify any values that are outside the expected range. Any values outside the expected range will be re-checked with the original form for accuracy.
The independent variables are the Work-Family Balance responses, Dyadic Coping Questionnaire. Initially, bivariate analyses will be conducted to determine if there are any statistically significant associations between any of the variables. For the multivariate analyses, the demographic data and variables that proved to be significant in the bivariate analyses will be analyzed with logistic regressions tests. Various regressions will be conducted in order to determine the best model for predicting couple satisfaction.
References
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