Is work—family balance more than conflict and enrichment?

Abstract

This study deepens our theoretical and practical understanding of work–family balance, defined as the ‘accomplishment of role-related expectations that are negotiated and shared between an individual and his/her role-related partners in the work and family domains’ (Grzywacz & Carlson, 2007: 458). We develop a new measure of work–family balance and establish discriminant validity between it, work–family conflict, and work–family enrichment. Further, we examine the relationship of work–family balance with six key work and family outcomes. Results suggest that balance explains variance beyond that explained by traditional measures of conflict and enrichment for five of six outcomes tested: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, family satisfaction, family performance, and family functioning. We conclude with a discussion of the applications of our work.

The influence of self-efficacy beliefs for student parents attending university

“…In addition to demographic variables, six measures were utilized for this study: Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (Zajacova et al, 2005); Parental Self-Efficacy Scale (Caprara, Regalia, Scabini, Barbaranelli, & Bandura, 2004); School, family, and general life satisfaction subscales of the Extended Satisfaction with Life Scale (Alfonso, Allison, Rader, & Gorman, 1996); and the Work-Family Balance Scale (Carlson et al, 2009) Self-efficacy. Self-efficacy beliefs reflect what individuals believe they can accomplish, and these beliefs regulate thought processes, motivation, and affective and physiological states (Bandura, 1997).…”

“…School-family balance is defined as an individual's perceived ability to manage both school and family role responsibilities. This construct was assessed using an adapted version of the Work-Family Balance Scale (Carlson, et al, 2009). Adopting Gryzwacz and Carlson's (2007) definition of work-family balance, the measure is grounded in an individual's lived experience of the work-family interface and moves beyond individual experiences of conflict and enrichment between roles.…”

“…Grzywacz and Carlson (2007) define work-family balance as the "accomplishment of role-related expectations that are negotiated and shared between an individual and his/her role-related partners in the work and family domains" (p. 458). Work-family balance includes lower levels of work-family strain and better perceived work-family fit and relates to a variety of work and family-related outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, family satisfaction, and family functioning (Carlson, Grzywacz, & Zivnuska, 2009) as well as indicators of physical and mental well-being (Frone et al, 1997). Adapting the concept of work-family balance to school-family balance, we suggest that school-family balance should relate to both school and family outcomes (e.g., school satisfaction and family satisfaction).…”

“…In order to investigate the research questions, a conceptual model was created that included the relevant latent variables: academic self-efficacy, parental self-efficacy, schoolfamily balance, family satisfaction, school satisfaction, and general life satisfaction (figure 1). The model was built based on previously documented relationships: (1) Academic self-efficacy as a direct predictor of school satisfaction and parental self-efficacy as a direct predictor of family satisfaction (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996;Bandura et al, 2011), and (2) family satisfaction and school satisfaction as direct predictors of life satisfaction (Carlson et al, 2009). …”

“…Testing of this alternative model was included for two specific purposes. First, researchers have demonstrated that the original work-family balance measure contributes to the explanation of both work and family outcomes such as job satisfaction and family satisfaction (Carlson, et al, 2009); however, there was no previous work that guided the specific placement of this variable in the conceptual model. In the alternative model, the domain-specific efficacy measures affect domain-specific satisfaction.…”