Strategies for Coping with Work Stressors and Family Stressors: Scale Development and Validation

Purpose

Both individuals and organizations benefit when workers can effectively cope with stressors in the work and family domains. This study takes an inductive approach to the development of a work stressor coping scale and a family stressor coping scale.

Design/Methodology/Approach

In phase one, a comprehensive list of coping strategies was generated through a multi-step content analysis of qualitative interviews. In phase two, the content validity of the work stressor and family stressor coping strategy scales was established using data from three samples; and in phase three, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity evidence were obtained using data from two samples.

Findings

A multi-step content analysis of qualitative interview data was used to develop a list of 365 coping strategy statements (182 work and 183 family) representing 11 work and 14 family stressor coping strategies. Multiple samples were used to reduce the number of scale items, and establish evidence for the scales’ content, construct, and criterion-related validity. The final work stressor coping scale consisted of 36 items assessing 12 different strategies, and the final family stressor coping scale consisted of 45 items assessing 15 different strategies.

Implications

Findings from the present study suggest that individuals may use a wider variety of strategies to cope with work stressors and family stressors than previously thought, and these strategies may be differentially effective depending on the stressor domain (i.e., work or family) and outcome (e.g., work-to-family conflict vs. family-to-work conflict).

Originality/Value

The inductive nature of our study resulted in a comprehensive and domain-specific scales assessing how individuals cope with work stressors and family stressors.     

Challenge and Hindrance Stressors and Work Outcomes: the Moderating Role of Day-Level Affect

Journal of Business and Psychology - Our research examined the role of challenge and hindrance stressors, as well as the interactive effects of these stressors with positive and negative affect, in...     

Muscularity Beliefs of Female College Student-Athletes

Female athletes in the United States face the paradoxical challenge of acquiring a degree of muscularity to be successful in their sport, yet they also endure pressure from societal expectations of femininity that often don??t conform with the notion of muscularity. To address research questions about how female student-athletes balance muscularity and femininity, we conducted a mixed-methods study to examine muscularity beliefs among female student-athletes, female college students, and male college student-athletes. We quantitatively examined Drive for Muscularity Scale (DMS) scores from 221 participants attending college in the Midwestern US. Results indicated that female student-athletes reported significantly higher DMS scores than female students, but male student-athletes reported the highest DMS scores in the sample. Qualitative results indicated that female student-athletes wanted to be muscular for these reasons: functionality (45%), health (42%), external gratification (21%), and internal gratification (18%). Only 16% of female student-athletes did not want to be muscular, whereas every male student-athlete reported a desire to be muscular. The results of this study can be used to better understand the unique drive for muscularity among athletes, particularly female college student-athletes who live the paradox of negotiating societal standards of femininity with this desire to be muscular. This enhanced understanding can help create more nuanced interventions for coaches, administrators, and mental health professionals to use to help female student-athletes create space to resist constraining societal gender ideologies. Doing so can help these student-athletes actualize their athletic potential on the field as well as their interpersonal and intrapersonal potential off the field.     

A Dispositional Approach to Work�CSchool Conflict and Enrichment

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate a dispositional model of the work?Cschool interface. In particular, we examined the relationship between core self-evaluations (CSEs) and proactive personality with both work?Cschool conflict (WSC) and work?Cschool enrichment (WSE) as well as a variety of work and school outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach

314 employed college students were surveyed about their experiences managing work and school roles.

Findings

Structural equation modeling showed that CSEs were related to both WSC and WSE as well as school outcomes, whereas proactive personality was related to WSE and job and school outcomes but not WSC. WSC was negatively related to school performance, whereas WSE was positively related to school and job satisfaction as well as school performance.

Implications

Organizations, universities, and researchers should be aware that dispositional variables influence perceptions of work and school roles as well as important outcome variables, and that further intervention efforts may be needed to help students manage work and school roles.

Originality/Value

Past studies have demonstrated that job characteristics influence the work?Cschool interface, but this study is among the first to demonstrate that dispositional factors also relate to WSC and WSE.     

Positional effects in the lexical retuning of speech perception

Listeners use lexical knowledge to adjust to speakers’ idiosyncratic pronunciations. Dutch listeners learn to interpret an ambiguous sound between /s/ and /f/ as /f/ if they hear it word-finally in Dutch words normally ending in /f/, but as /s/ if they hear it in normally /s/-final words. Here, we examined two positional effects in lexically guided retuning. In Experiment 1, ambiguous sounds during exposure always appeared in word-initial position (replacing the first sounds of /f/- or /s/-initial words). No retuning was found. In Experiment 2, the same ambiguous sounds always appeared word-finally during exposure. Here, retuning was found. Lexically guided perceptual learning thus appears to emerge reliably only when lexical knowledge is available as the to-be-tuned segment is initially being processed. Under these conditions, however, lexically guided retuning was position independent: It generalized across syllabic positions. Lexical retuning can thus benefit future recognition of particular sounds wherever they appear in words.     

Action embellishment: an intention bias in the perception of success

Na?ve theories of behavior hold that actions are caused by an agent's intentions, and the subsequent success of an action is measured by the satisfaction of those intentions. However, when an action is not as successful as intended, the expected causal link between intention and action may distort perception of the action itself. Four studies found evidence of an intention bias in perceptions of action. Actors perceived actions to be more successful when given a prior choice (e.g., choose between 2 words to type) and also when they felt greater motivation for the action (e.g., hitting pictures of disliked people). When the intent was to fail (e.g., singing poorly), choice led to worse estimates of performance. A final experiment suggested that intention bias works independent from self-enhancement motives. In observing another actor hit pictures of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, shots were distorted to match the actor's intentions, even when it opposed personal wishes. Together these studies indicate that judgments of action may be automatically distorted and that these inferences arise from the expected consistency between intention and action in agency.     

'No-show': therapist racial/ethnic disparities in client unilateral termination

In the present study, the authors examined the source of racial/ethnic minority (REM) disparities in unilateral termination (i.e., the client ending therapy without informing the therapist)--a form of dropout that is associated with poor alliance and outcome. First, the authors tested whether some therapists were more likely to have clients who reported unilaterally terminating as compared with other therapists. Next, the authors examined 2 competing hypotheses regarding the therapists role in termination disparities: (a) that racial/ethnic disparities in unilateral termination are similar across therapists and thus due to other components of the treatment process or (b) that racial/ethnic disparities in unilateral termination are specific to therapists, where some therapists are more likely, on average, to have higher rates of unilateral termination with REM clients as compared with White clients. The sample included 155 REM clients and 177 White clients who were treated by 44 therapists at a university counseling center. The results showed that therapists accounted for a significant proportion of the variation in clients' unilateral termination, and REM clients were more likely to report they unilaterally terminated from therapy as compared with White clients. Furthermore, racial/ethnic disparities in clients' report of unilateral termination varied across therapists' caseloads. These results suggest that therapists have a central role in their clients' unilateral termination and have implications for understanding racial/ethnic mental health disparities.     

To judge a book by its weight you need to know its content: Knowledge moderates the use of embodied cues

Participants evaluated a book as more important when it weighed heavily in their hands (due to a concealed weight), but only when they had substantive knowledge about the book. Those who had read a synopsis (Study 1), had read the book (Study 2) and knew details about its plot (Study 3) were influenced by its weight, whereas those unfamiliar with the book were not. This contradicts the widely shared assumption that metaphorically related perceptual inputs serve as heuristic cues that people primarily use in the absence of more diagnostic information. Instead, perceptual inputs may increase the accessibility of metaphorically congruent knowledge or may suggest an initial hypothesis that is only endorsed when supporting information is accessible.     

The Effects of Spirituality and Religion on Outcomes in Patients with Chronic Heart Failure

Heart failure (HF) is a chronic progressive disease with marked morbidity and mortality. Patients enduring this condition suffer from fluctuations in symptom burden such as fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain, sexual dysfunction, dramatic changes in body image and depression. As physicians, we often ask patients to trust in our ability to ameliorate their symptoms, but oftentimes we do not hold all of the answers, and our best efforts are only modestly effective. The suffering endured by these individuals and their families may even call into question one??s faith in a higher power and portends to significant spiritual struggle. In the face of incurable and chronic physical conditions, it seems logical that patients would seek alternative or ancillary methods, notably spiritual ones, to improve their ability to deal with their condition. Although difficult to study, spirituality has been evaluated and deemed to have a beneficial effect on multiple measures including global quality of life, depression and medical compliance in the treatment of patients with HF. The model of HF treatment incorporates a multidisciplinary approach. This should involve coordination between primary care, cardiology, palliative care, nursing, patients and, importantly, individuals providing psychosocial as well as spiritual support. This review intends to outline the current understanding and necessity of spirituality??s influence on those suffering from HF.     

Effects of economy type and nicotine on the essential value of food in rats

The exponential demand equation proposed by Hursh and Silberberg (2008) provides an estimate of the essential value of a good as a function of price. The model predicts that essential value should remain constant across changes in the magnitude of a reinforcer, but may change as a function of motivational operations. In Experiment 1, rats' demand for food across a sequence of fixed-ratio schedules was assessed during open and closed economy conditions and across one- and two-pellet per reinforcer delivery conditions. The exponential equation was fitted to the relation between fixed-ratio size and the logarithm of the absolute number of reinforcers. Estimates of the rate of change in elasticity of food, the proposed measure of essential value, were compared across conditions. Essential value was equivalent across magnitudes during the closed economy, but showed a slight decrease across magnitudes during the open economy. Experiment 2 explored the behavioral mechanisms of nicotine's effects on consumption with the results from Experiment 1 serving as a within-subject frame of reference. The same subjects were administered nicotine via subcutaneously implanted osmotic minipumps at a dose of 3 mg/kg/day and exposed to both the one- and two-pellet conditions under a closed economy. Although nicotine produced large decreases in demand, essential value was not significantly changed. The data from the present experiments provide further evidence for the adequacy of the exponential demand equation as a tool for quantifying the rate of change in elasticity of a good and for assessing behavioral mechanisms of drug action.