Work-Family Conflict and Depressive Symptoms Among Chinese Employees: Cross-Level Interaction of Organizational Justice Climate and Family Flexibility

Relationship Between Work-Family Conflict and Depressive Symptoms Among Male Firefighters in China: Job Types and Family Structure as Moderators

OBJECTIVES

This study aims to examine the relationship between work-family conflict and depressive symptoms while considering job types and family structure as moderators.

METHODS

In July and August 2021, 1328 male Chinese firefighters completed an online cross-sectional survey.

RESULTS

The results indicated that work-family conflicts among Chinese firefighters presented a significant association with worse depressive symptoms. More specifically, strain conflict and behavioral conflict had positive relationships with worse depressive symptoms, while time conflict had a negative relationship. In addition, job types moderated the association between work-family conflict, strain conflict, and behavior conflict with depressive symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

This study shows that work-family conflict is significantly associated with depressive symptoms among Chinese firefighters. Our findings advocate working system reform for Chinese firefighters, and more attention is needed on their mental health protection in the future.

Assessing Work-Family Conflict Experienced by Chinese Parents of Young Children: Validation of the Chinese Version of the Work and Family Conflict Scale

While there a number of measures to assess work-family conflict already exist, there are no well-validated measures exist for clinical use with Chinese parents. This study sought to validate a Chinese version of the work and family conflict scale (WAFCS), a brief 10-item scale developed for clinical and research use with parents. Relying on a sample of 447 Chinese parents in Hong Kong, this study examined the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the WAFCS. Results showed that a two-factor model, similar to that of the original scale, fit the data well. The scale had concurrent and discriminant validity, while the scale's measurement invariance across gender and its internal consistency were also supported. Such robust psychometric properties suggest that the WAFCS is a promising tool that can be applied in a variety of research and clinical settings to examine work-family conflict experienced by Chinese parents.

Gender role attitudes and work-family conflict: A multiple mediating model including moderated mediation analysis

With the fierce labor market competition, the family population's size continues to expand, and the conflict between work and family requirements for individual roles becomes increasingly intense. Most studies focus on work-family conflict as an antecedent variable, and few studies use work-family conflict as an outcome variable. This study aimed to explore the underlying mechanism of the relationship between gender role attitudes and work-family conflict. Two models were tested using conditional process analysis for testing direct and indirect effects on a sample of 324 employees: A serial multiple mediation model, and the multiple mediation model including the moderating role of education level and subjective socioeconomic status. The results suggested that (1) gender role attitudes significantly and positively predicted work-family conflict. (2) Parental sacrifice and subjective well-being played multiple mediating roles between gender role attitudes and work-family conflict. (3) Education level moderated the relationship between gender role attitudes and parental sacrifice, as evidenced by the fact that low education level amplified the positive predictive effect of gender role attitudes on parental sacrifice. (4) Subjective socioeconomic status moderated the relationship between gender role attitudes and subjective well-being, suggesting that high subjective socioeconomic status amplified the negative predictive effect of gender role attitudes on subjective well-being. This work contributes to the understanding of the process underlying the relationship between gender role attitudes and work-family conflict, and to the literature reporting the possible moderated role of education level and subjective socioeconomic status on the influence outcomes of gender role attitudes. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

Factors associated with the work-self balance of nurses in an advanced medical center

Aim

Balancing between personal and working life of nurses is important to increase their job satisfaction and to continue their careers. Our purpose was to investigate the relationship between nurses and work-self balance (WSB) at different phases of life, such as age, marriage and raising children, and the occupational factors that influence WSB that can be used to improve the work environment for nurses.

Methods

Using a self-administered questionnaire, we asked about gender, age, marital status, presence of children, working hours, and night shift. Occupational stresses, including WSB, were assessed with the New Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (New BJSQ) and the Organizational Justice Questionnaire (OJQ). The total number of unmarried and married respondents was 819. We investigated whether marital status and cohabiting children make a difference in WSB in the three age groups (less than 30 years, 31-40 years, and more than 41 years) using a Mann-Whitney U test. In addition, we examined occupational factors affecting WSB using multiple regression analysis.

Results

The value of WSB negative was significantly greater in the group of married persons than in the group of unmarried persons (p < 0.05) and was significantly greater in the group with cohabiting children than in the group without cohabiting children (p < 0.01) only in the group aged 31-40 years. Multiple regression analysis indicated that significant occupational factors affecting WSB differed by each age group.

Conclusion

This survey showed that the factors and degree of WSB vary according to the generation and family environment of nurses.

Organizational Justice and Health: Reviewing Two Decades of Studies

Organizational justice refers to employees’ perceptions of the fairness of decision-making rules and policies in the workplace. Lack of justice is suggested to be a significant psychosocial risk factor that affects employees’ attitudes and health. The aim of this narrative review was to compile the evidence available about the effects of organizational justice on health. To this end, a literature search was carried out using the Web of Science, PubMed, and PsycINFO databases. The final sample consisted of 103 articles that studied the effects of justice on mental health (40 results), job stress (26), sickness absence (15), physical health (14), absenteeism/presenteeism (3), safety at work (3), and health of third parties (2). The results show that perceptions of workplace justice predict employees’ mental health, stress-related health problems, and lower levels of sickness absence were relatively compelling. Future studies should focus on less-researched outcomes and on how these associations are modified by other variables for a better understanding of how justice affects health, with a view to being able to carry out preventive measures more efficiently.

Work-family conflict and posttraumatic stress symptoms among college teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic

The study aimed to examine the indirect factors underlying the association between work–family conflict and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in college teachers during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Three potential indirect factors were examined: perceived stress, basic psychological needs, and rumination. A total of 274 college teachers were recruited. All participants completed an electronic questionnaire that assessed their exposure to the pandemic, work–family conflict, perceived stress, basic psychological needs, rumination, and PTSS. The results showed that after controlling for pandemic exposure, gender, and age, work–family conflict was associated with PTSS via perceived stress alone, rumination alone, a path from perceived stress to basic psychological needs, and a path from perceived stress to rumination. These results indicate that work–family conflict is positively associated with PTSS indirectly via perceived stress, rumination, and basic psychological needs during the COVID‐19 pandemic. These three mediators may completely explain the relation of work–family conflict to PTSS.

Exploration of the Socioecological Determinants of Hong Kong Workers' Work-Life Balance: A Grounded Theory Model

BACKGROUND

Although a growing body of research has investigated the theoretical and empirical models of work-life balance (WLB), the propositions of this phenomenon remain nonunified. Thus, a grounded theory approach was adopted to explore the viewpoints of workers regarding WLB and its determinants and consequences.

METHODS

Individual face-to-face interviews were conducted to investigate the attitudes and experiences of Hong Kong workers towards WLB, in which 50 workers were interviewed. All data of interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded into five levels of the socioecological framework (i.e., intrapersonal level, interpersonal level, organisational level, community and government policy).

RESULTS

The grounded theory model established that work-life balance and personal context mutually affected each other, and work-life balance was unidirectionally affected by the environmental context. The ability to maintain a continual satisfied physical and mental states among multiple roles under the emergence of unexpected environmental factors was proposed as the definition of work-life balance.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings of this study offer essential research insights into the importance of WLB, the dynamic features for workers to sustain balance and constructing a reliable and exhaustive assessment model for work-life balance for future studies.

Association of Organizational Behavior with Work Engagement and Work-Home Conflicts of Physician in China

This study aimed to examine how organizational behavior is associated with work engagement (WE) and work-home conflicts (WHCs) of physicians. The data were from a national cross-sectional survey of 3255 Chinese physicians. We examined organizational fairness, leadership attention, and team interaction for organizational behavior. The results indicate that greater organizational fairness is associated with higher WE and lower WHCs. High task fairness was associated with greater pride, and more enjoyment in work, lower sense of guilt towards their family, and less complaints from family members. Physicians reporting higher levels of leaders' attention to their opinions reported experiencing more enjoyment of their work, and less effects on their care for family. A greater number of dinners with colleagues per month was associated with higher WE and lower WHCs, whilst a greater number of clinical case meetings per month was associated with higher WE and higher WHCs. The results suggest that the behavior of organizations could be an important intervention to improve the wellbeing of physicians.