Lee S, Almeida DM, Davis KD, King RB, Hammer LB, Kelly EL.
Latent profiles of perceived time adequacy for paid work, parenting, and partner roles. Journal of Family Psychology. 2015;25 (5) :788-98.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
This study examined feelings of having enough time (i.e., perceived time adequacy) in a sample of employed parents (N = 880) in information technology and extended-care industries. Adapting a person-centered latent profile approach, we identified 3 profiles of perceived time adequacy for paid work, parenting, and partner roles: family time protected, family time sacrificed, and time balanced. Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory (Hobfòll, 1989), we examined the associations of stressors and resources with the time adequacy profiles. Parents in the family time sacrificed profile were more likely to be younger, women, have younger children, work in the extended-care industry, and have nonstandard work schedules compared to those in the family time protected profile. Results from multinomial logistic regression analyses revealed that, with the time balanced profile as the reference group, having fewer stressors and more resources in the family context (less parent-child conflict and more partner support), work context (longer company tenure, higher schedule control and job satisfaction), and work-family interface (lower work-to-family conflict) was linked to a higher probability of membership in the family time protected profile. By contrast, having more stressors and fewer resources, in the forms of less partner support and higher work-to-family conflict, predicted a higher likelihood of being in the family time sacrificed profile. Our findings suggest that low work-to-family conflict is the most critical predictor of membership in the family time protected profile, whereas lack of partner support is the most important factor to be included in the family time sacrificed profile.
McHale SM, Davis KD, Green K, Casper LM, Kan M, Kelly EL, King RB, Okechukwu CA.
Effects of a Workplace Intervention on Parent–Child Relationships. Journal of Child and Family Studies. 2015 :1-9.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
This study tested whether effects of a workplace intervention, aimed at promoting employees’ schedule control and supervisor support for personal and family life, had implications for parent–adolescent relationships; we also tested whether parent–child relationships differed as a function of how many intervention program sessions participants attended. Data came from a group randomized trial of a workplace intervention, delivered in the information technology division of a Fortune 500 company. Analyses focused on 125 parent–adolescent dyads that completed baseline and 12-month follow-up home interviews. Results revealed no main effects of the intervention, but children of employees who attended 75 % or more program sessions reported more time with their parent and more parent education involvement compared to adolescents whose parents attended <75 % of sessions, and they tended to report more time with parent and more parental solicitation of information about their experiences compared to adolescents whose parents were randomly assigned to the usual practice condition.
Davis KD, Lawson KM, Almeida DM, Davis KD, King RB, Hammer LB, Casper LM, Okechukwu CA, Hanson GC, McHale SM.
Parent's daily time with their children: A workplace intervention. Pediatrics. 2015.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
OBJECTIVES: In the context of a group randomized field trial, we evaluated whether parents who participated in a workplace intervention, designed to increase supervisor support for personal and family life and schedule control, reported significantly more daily time with their children at the 12-month follow-up compared with parents assigned to the Usual Practice group. We also tested whether the intervention effect was moderated by parent gender, child gender, or child age.
METHODS: The Support-Transform-Achieve-Results Intervention was delivered in an information technology division of a US Fortune 500 company. Participants included 93 parents (45% mothers) of a randomly selected focal child aged 9 to 17 years (49% daughters) who completed daily telephone diaries at baseline and 12 months after intervention. During evening telephone calls on 8 consecutive days, parents reported how much time they spent with their child that day.
RESULTS: Parents in the intervention group exhibited a significant increase in parent-child shared time, 39 minutes per day on average, between baseline and the 12-month follow-up. By contrast, parents in the Usual Practice group averaged 24 fewer minutes with their child per day at the 12-month follow-up. Intervention effects were evident for mothers but not for fathers and for daughters but not sons.
CONCLUSIONS: The hypothesis that the intervention would improve parents’ daily time with their children was supported. Future studies should examine how redesigning work can change the quality of parent-child interactions and activities known to be important for youth health and development.
Olson R, Crain TL, Bodner T, King RB, Hammer LB, Klein LC, Erickson L, Moen P, Berkman LF, Buxton OM.
A workplace intervention improves sleep: results from the randomized controlled Work, Family & Health Study. Sleep Health. 2015;1 (1) :55-65.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
Study objectives: The Work, Family, and Health Network Study tested the hypothesis that a workplace intervention designed to increase family-supportive supervision and employee control over work time improves actigraphic measures of sleep quantity and quality.
Design: Cluster-randomized trial.
Setting: A global information technology firm.
Participants: US employees at an information technology firm.
Interventions: Randomly selected clusters of managers and employees participated in a 3-month, social, and organizational change process intended to reduce work-family conflict. The intervention included interactive sessions with facilitated discussions, role playing, and games. Managers completed training in family-supportive supervision.
Measurements and results: Primary outcomes of total sleep time (sleep duration) and wake after sleep onset (sleep quality) were collected from week-long actigraphy recordings at baseline and 12 months. Secondary outcomes included self-reported sleep insufficiency and insomnia symptoms. Twelve-month interviews were completed by 701 (93% retention), of whom 595 (85%) completed actigraphy. Restricting analyses to participants with ≥3 valid days of actigraphy yielded a sample of 473-474 for intervention effectiveness analyses. Actigraphy-measured sleep duration was 8 min/d greater among intervention employees relative to controls (P < .05). Sleep insufficiency was reduced among intervention employees (P = .002). Wake after sleep onset and insomnia symptoms were not different between groups. Path models indicated that increased control over work hours and subsequent reductions in work-family conflict mediated the improvement in sleep sufficiency.
Conclusions: The workplace intervention did not overtly address sleep, yet intervention employees slept 8 min/d more and reported greater sleep sufficiency. Interventions should address environmental and psychosocial causes of sleep deficiency, including workplace factors