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A "Holy Grail" of Work and Family Life? When and How Schedule Control Functions as a Resource
Full text linkSchedule control is a job resource used to determine the timing of paid work and has been touted as a “holy grail” among work-family scholars and practitioners. While prior research has demonstrated that schedule control is linked with better work-life balance and health, it may not be an unfettered job reward. With this dissertation, I advance new knowledge that complicates the resource view of schedule control by integrating theoretical perspectives from diverse fields, including scholarship on roles in the work-family interface, sociology of mental health, and occupational health psychology.
My dissertation extends prior research by identifying the conditions and statuses under which schedule control functions as a job resource versus scenarios where it might have circumscribed benefits or even unintended consequences for work-family life and health. Three patterns derived from longitudinal data analysis complicate the characterization of schedule control as solely a job resource. First, in Chapter 2 I reveal some of the downsides of schedule control for the work-family interface. I find that increases in schedule control are associated with a greater frequency of blurring the boundaries between work and nonwork roles. Moreover, schedule control exacerbates the association between job pressure and role blurring—and these observed downsides are stronger for women. Second, in Chapter 3 I compare the protective resource functions of schedule control and mastery for mitigating the detrimental health effects of competing work and family roles. I find that mastery has generalized stress-buffering functions whereby it alleviates the health-harming effects of both directions of work-family conflict. In contrast, schedule control has asymmetrical moderating functions: It attenuates the health effects of work-to-family conflict only. Third, in Chapter 4 I identify some of the status-based inequalities in the relationship between schedule control and job pressure. While I find that increases in schedule control help alleviate job pressure, my results reveal that schedule control is more effective in mitigating job pressure among professionals (relative to non-professionals) and those with more managerial power in the workplace. Collectively, this dissertation integrates interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives to advance knowledge on when and how schedule control functions as a resource for workers.Ph.D
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Gender differences in stress manifestations: An analysis of interpersonal dependency and multiple stress outcomes
No full textDrawing from social psychological theories of stress and strain, I seek to understand gender differences in "internalizing" and "externalizing" manifestations of stress within a representative sample of 1,800 young adults in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Specifically, I examine mediating and moderating relationships between gender, stress, and three outcomes: depression, marijuana use, and criminal behavior. I also assess the extent to which gendered dimensions of interpersonal dependency---emotional reliance and assertion of autonomy---are psychologically beneficial or damaging when examining multiple stress outcomes between and within genders. Findings corroborate previous research that suggests that women average higher depression, men average higher marijuana use and criminal behavior, and stress exposure increases risk for multiple stress outcomes. Additionally, results indicate that the positive influence of stress on marijuana use is more pronounced among young men than women. Moreover, interpersonal dependency dimensions are neither inherently harmful nor helpful when considering moderating effects of gender and stress exposure on multiple stress outcomes. The results speak to the limits of examining single stress outcomes and qualify conditions under which traditionally "feminine" and "masculine" interpersonal attributes may act as psychosocial resources or detriments in the stress process.</p
Being Single in Late-Life: Single Strain, Moderating Resources, and Distress
Full text linkUsing a sample of 532 nonmarried adults over age 65 residing in the District of Columbia and two adjoining Maryland counties, this study examines "single strain"--the strain of not being married or not living with a partner in late-life. First, I consider how social and economic statuses affect exposure of nonmarried elders to single strain. Second, I study how sociodemographic characteristics and psychosocial resources moderate the effect of single strain on mental health. Results of multiple OLS regression analyses indicate that while social statuses influence elders' exposure to single strain, the differential emotional responsiveness of nonmarried older adults to single strain is largely unaffected by their sociodemographic characteristics. In contrast, mastery and self-esteem are powerful moderating resources: Nonmarried elders with high mastery and self-esteem are less adversely affected by single strain than those with lower levels of intrapsychic resources
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Nativity Status and the Relationship between Education and Health: The Role of Work-related and Psychosocial Resources
Full text linkThe claim of some policymakers that education is the great equalizer of socioeconomic disparities in health (Low et al. 2005) has come under question in recent years. Higher education is related to better health for both immigrants and the Canadian-born. However, immigrants experience weaker health returns to their education than the native-born (Kennedy et al. 2006). Despite the importance of this issue, the reasons for this gap are not fully understood. This dissertation integrates the immigrant health, social stress, and immigrant integration literatures to better understand this issue, using Cycles 17 and 22 of the Statistics Canada collected General Social Survey (GSS).
The analyses reveal that education has a diminished effect on the self-rated health (although not stress) of immigrants, the functional limitations of established immigrants, and the happiness of recent immigrants. The reasons for this gap vary depending on the health measure. The weaker relationship between education and the functional ability of established immigrants and the happiness of recent immigrants is explained by immigrants’ lower work-related returns (employment type, occupational skill, personal income) to education. For self-rated health, the nativity status differential in the effect of education on self-rated health is rooted in immigrants’ lower work-related and psychosocial returns (mastery and trust, although not social support) to education. Since work-related and psychosocial resources are integrally linked to health, immigrants experience lower health returns to their education than the native-born.
These findings make three major contributions. First, they extend the traditional understanding of the relationship between education and health (Low et al. 2005), underscoring that immigrants do not experience the same level of health benefits to their education as the native-born. Second, they augment knowledge about why immigrants experience weaker health returns to their education than the native-born: because they receive diminished employment types, occupational levels, income, mastery, and trust relative to their levels of education. Third, the results highlight that foreign education is not linked to as high mastery and trust as that of the native-born – a new finding that underscores that foreign education is not just linked to diminished work-related resources and health, but psychosocial resources as well.Ph
How Socioeconomic Status Shapes Individuals' Experiences of the Work-family Interface in Canada
No full textWork-family conflict and time pressure have emerged as potent and pervasive stressors in the daily lives of Canadian workers. Yet little is known about the socioeconomic distribution of these work-family outcomes, or the underlying mechanisms, because previous research has largely focused on homogeneous samples, typically consisting of well-educated managers and/or professionals. Drawing on the Stress Process Model as an overarching framework, and through statistical analyses of confidential data from Cycle 20 of the General Social Survey (2006), the dissertation at hand seeks to address this significant gap in knowledge by exploring how and why socioeconomic status (i.e., education or occupation) affects exposure to work-family conflict and time pressure. The findings of this dissertation are largely consistent with (limited) previous research, demonstrating that higher-status individuals in terms of education, occupation, or income are more exposed to work-family conflict and time pressure than their lower-status counterparts. Only in the case of work-to-family conflict do the findings diverge somewhat from this pattern, as individuals in both the highest and lowest occupational groups have the greatest and identical exposure to this work-family outcome. Further, the socioeconomic distribution of work-family conflict is invariant across gender and parental status. However, gender and parenthood jointly condition the occupational distribution of time pressure, such that mothers in managerial occupations have the greatest exposure.
Job- and home-related demands and resources consistently affect work-family conflict and time pressure across socioeconomic groups. However, constellations of job- and home-related demands and resources tend to differ between socioeconomic groups, largely accounting for the observed socioeconomic distributions of work-family conflict and time pressure. This suggests that, in order to be effective, government and workplace policies and programs intended to ease earning- and caring-role combination must be designed with an understanding of the unique circumstances that give rise to work-family issues among higher- and lower-status individuals.Ph.D
Socioeconomic Status, Stress Exposure, and Psychological Well-Being: Complexities in the Stress Process
No full textDecades of research has established an inverse association between socioeconomic position and psychological distress. Within medical sociology, the stress process model represents a dominant framework for investigating mechanisms that generate emotional inequality. Central to the stress process perspective is the observation that exposure to social stress is fundamentally rooted in social statuses and the social roles individuals occupy in their daily lives. Historically, research guided by the stress process paradigm has demonstrated that disparities in psychological distress arise to a substantial degree from inequalities in stress exposure—individuals placed lower in the socioeconomic hierarchy, for instance, are exposed to higher levels of cumulative and operant life stress, and this translates into mental health disadvantages.
This dissertation moves beyond existing research by identifying circumstances under which socioeconomic patterns in mental health do not conform to what is commonly predicted by traditional hypotheses, and also provides theoretical insights and empirical evidence about the dynamics that generate pockets of complexity in social stress research. Three major findings emerge. First, I present evidence that time-stable differences between individuals introduce a nontrivial amount of spuriousness in the association between income-related variables and mental health. This raises questions about the independent effect of current income dynamics over and above, for example, the array of disadvantages that individuals may face at more distal stages in the life course. Second, I demonstrate the ways that SES modifies the concurrent experience of job stressors and resources. My findings highlight conditions under which lower status workers are shielded from the effects of stressors, but also the ways that resources may actually leave higher status individuals more vulnerable to the effects of stress exposure. Third, I identify a subgroup of professionals for which a status-health paradox is observed—higher status workers experience poorer mental health relative to their lower status peers—and this can be explained by the stressors of higher status in this particular profession. Each study can be considered an independent project, but taken together they represent an overarching contribution to sociological understandings of the interplay between SES, stress exposure, and mental health.Ph.D
The Social Antecedents and Consequences of the Sense of Distributive Injustice
Full text linkRoughly half of working adults in Canada and the United States report a sense of distributive injustice––that their earnings are unjustly too low. This evidence provides an impetus to document the antecedents and consequences of the sense of distributive injustice. More specifically, it encourages us to examine two fundamental questions in the study of distributive justice: (1) What do people think is just and why? (2) And, what are the consequences of the sense of injustice for individuals? Using population-based data, I address these questions through an interdisciplinary lens by integrating perspectives in the social psychology of distributive justice, the sociology of mental health, and occupational health psychology.
I assess the first question by fusing ideas in distributive justice and the work-family interface. I argue that the conceptualization of work-related inputs can be elaborated by considering the intersection of work and family roles. Specifically, I propose a model that delineates how excessive job pressures––and the ensuing role blurring behavior and work-to-family conflict––shape the expectation for greater rewards. My findings provide an updated account of the nature of work contributions for contemporary workers that shape their ideas of what they should justly earn.
The second part of the dissertation examines the consequences of underreward, focusing on the situational factors that function as moderators. In one study, I show that the relationship between underreward and job dissatisfaction is contingent on forms of security, such that the association is attenuated for those with high job and financial security, and for those employed in the public sector. The interpretation of the patterns for job security encourages the integration of the Job Demands-Resources Model and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In another study, I examine the ways in which two dimensions of SES––education and income––moderate the effects of perceived underreward on mental and physical health. I test two competing hypotheses––buffering-resource and status-disconfirmation––that delineate the moderating role of SES. Taken together, this dissertation draws upon and integrates diverse theoretical perspectives to identify new forms of work-related contributions that shape perceptions of a fair reward and the situational factors that modify reactions to underreward.Ph.D
Nativity Status and the Relationship between Education and Health: The Role of Work-related and Psychosocial Resources
No full textThe claim of some policymakers that education is the great equalizer of socioeconomic disparities in health (Low et al. 2005) has come under question in recent years. Higher education is related to better health for both immigrants and the Canadian-born. However, immigrants experience weaker health returns to their education than the native-born (Kennedy et al. 2006). Despite the importance of this issue, the reasons for this gap are not fully understood. This dissertation integrates the immigrant health, social stress, and immigrant integration literatures to better understand this issue, using Cycles 17 and 22 of the Statistics Canada collected General Social Survey (GSS).
The analyses reveal that education has a diminished effect on the self-rated health (although not stress) of immigrants, the functional limitations of established immigrants, and the happiness of recent immigrants. The reasons for this gap vary depending on the health measure. The weaker relationship between education and the functional ability of established immigrants and the happiness of recent immigrants is explained by immigrants’ lower work-related returns (employment type, occupational skill, personal income) to education. For self-rated health, the nativity status differential in the effect of education on self-rated health is rooted in immigrants’ lower work-related and psychosocial returns (mastery and trust, although not social support) to education. Since work-related and psychosocial resources are integrally linked to health, immigrants experience lower health returns to their education than the native-born.
These findings make three major contributions. First, they extend the traditional understanding of the relationship between education and health (Low et al. 2005), underscoring that immigrants do not experience the same level of health benefits to their education as the native-born. Second, they augment knowledge about why immigrants experience weaker health returns to their education than the native-born: because they receive diminished employment types, occupational levels, income, mastery, and trust relative to their levels of education. Third, the results highlight that foreign education is not linked to as high mastery and trust as that of the native-born – a new finding that underscores that foreign education is not just linked to diminished work-related resources and health, but psychosocial resources as well.Ph
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