What about Us? Measuring the Work-Life Balance of People Who Do Not Have Children

Abstract

To date, the work-family literature has examined conflict between work and family and family and work. In this research the use of the word "family" usually denotes child-care responsibilities. Furthermore, scales developed to measure conflict have concentrated on a family structure defined in this way. Little is known about conflict between work and non-work experienced by people who do not live within a family structure that includes children. The aim of this paper is to examine whether existing work-family and family-work conflict measures might be adapted to measure work-life conflict and life-work conflict for full-time female workers (N = 940) with and without children. Results suggest that a work-family conflict scale may not adequately measure the conflicts experienced by people who do not live within a family structure that involves children. The implications of these findings are further discussed with suggestions concerning the feasibility of using a generic work-life scale to measure work-life balance and a specific work-family scale to measure work-family balance.

The associations between work–life balance behaviours, teamwork climate and safety climate: cross-sectional survey introducing the work–life climate scale, psychometric properties, benchmarking data and future directions

“…7 Recent research has suggested that traditional WLB scales do not adequately measure the conflicts experienced by people without children. 8 One frequently used method is to include a single WLB item. The leading researcher in assessing and understanding the prevalence and severity of physician burnout, Dr Tait Shanafelt, uses a single item: 'My work schedule leaves me enough time for my personal/family life' (response options were strongly agree to strongly disagree).…”

Social connection and exclusion of Australian women with no children during midlife

“…Aggregate scores were computed for social networks, social interaction, social support, subjective social support, social and leisure participation, community participation, problems accessing and using services, work-life conflict, stigma consciousness and perceived stereotyping (Hughes, Blazer, & Hybels, 1990;Pinel, 1999;Somers, 1993;Waumsley et al, 2010). Items on paid work status and unemployment were used to compute employment status.…”

“…Data on socio-demographics, typologies of women with no children, stigmatisation, stereotyping and exclusion were collected by way of a self-administered online questionnaire. Indicators of exclusion were measured using the social network, social interaction and subjective social support subscales of the Duke Social Support Index (George, Blazer, Hughes, & Fowler, 1989), the MOS social support index (Chronbach's α = 0.97; one-year stability α = 0.78) (Sherbourne & Stewart, 1991) and an adapted social and leisure participation scale (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, 2012) in the social domain; participation in community groups, activities and events (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010), volunteering (Women's Health Australia, 2010), satisfaction with feeling part of the community (Cummins, Eckersley, Pallant, Van Vugt, & Misajon, 2003) and satisfaction with opportunities to have a say on important issues (Pope & Zhang, 2010) in the civic domain; degree of problems accessing and using services (Dermott et al, 2012) in the service domain; and employment status (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, 2012), personal income (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2011) and work-life conflict (Waumsley, Houston, & Marks, 2010) in the economic domain.…”

Relating Emotional Intelligence and Organisational Commitment through Moderated Mediation of Psychological Well-being and Work-life Balance: A Study on Teachers of NGOs

“…The Cronbach's α value for all the dimensions were above the threshold limit i.e., 0.70. Furthermore, work life balance was measured though 5 items generated with the help of previous literature such as (Waumsley et al, 2010). The Cronbach's α values for this construct was found to be greater than 0.70.…”