Overnight work-travel, work-to-family conflict, and psychological distress

ABSTRACT

Overnight work-related travel (OWT) is a job demand that is increasing among employees in the United States. Research suggests the impact of OWT is positively associated with work-to-family conflict (WFC) and mental health problems, such as psychological distress. By using data from a sample of 123 employed adults that travel overnight for work and live in dual-earner households in the United States, we examined the associations between the duration of OWT and (a) WFC and (b) psychological distress. We also examined if the associations between OWT and our outcomes were moderated by the gender of the respondent. Results indicated positive associations between the duration of OWT and both WFC and distress, but only among men, as compared to women. Our results signal a potential shift in the experience of work and family between men and women that may have differing consequences for their WFC and mental health. Our results highlight a need for further research in this area.

KEYWORDS:

• Overnight work-related travel
• Work-family conflict
• Gender
• Mental health
• Job demands
• Job mobility

Highlights

• Duration of work-related travel (OWT) is positively related to work-family conflict (WFC).

• Duration of work-related travel (OWT) is unrelated to psychological distress.

• But, the effect of OWT is moderated by gender for both outcomes.

• Among men, duration of OWT is associated with higher WFC and distress.

• Among women, OWT is not associated with either outcome.

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers of The Social Science Journal for their helpful comments on this paper. We also thank Laura Pineault for her assistance with the preparation of this manuscript.

Notes

¹ Qualtrics works with partner networks to select respondents for surveys through various means. Some are recruited through email invitation, in-app notifications, and SMS notifications, informing them about a survey for which they may qualify. Other times, respondents see surveys they are likely to qualify for upon signing into a panel portal. Potential respondents are informed the survey is for research purposes only, how long the survey is expected to take, and what incentives are available.

² Given that we standardized all variables ($z=\bar{x}-\mu /\sigma$) before their inclusion in the multivariate analyses, gender no longer equals 1 for female and 0 for male. Rather, gender equals −1.40 for males$(z=(0-.66/.47))$, and equals.72 for females$(z=(1-.66/.47))$.

³ In auxiliary analyses, we examined the association between number of children and the outcomes for different child age groupings (i.e., number of children under 6, between 7 and 12, and between 13 and 18). However, we did not find any significant associations between number of children in these different age groups and WFC, or distress. We also examined the association between different education groups and our outcomes. Again, we did not find any significant associations and the model that treated education as a series of dummy variables did not improve on the model that treated education linearly for either outcome (results available upon request).

Additional information

Funding

The Faculty Creative/Research Grant (2017), awarded by the College of Fine, Performing, and Communication Arts, Wayne State University; The Humanities Center Fellowship, Wayne State University. (2017)