THE EFFECT OF ONE PARTNERS JOB CHARACTERISTICS ON THE OTHER PARTNERS DISTRESS - A SERENDIPITOUS, BUT NATURALISTIC, EXPERIMENT

Citation
Dl. Morrison et R. Clements, THE EFFECT OF ONE PARTNERS JOB CHARACTERISTICS ON THE OTHER PARTNERS DISTRESS - A SERENDIPITOUS, BUT NATURALISTIC, EXPERIMENT, Journal of occupational and organizational psychology, 70, 1997, pp. 307-324
Citations number
50
ISSN journal
09631798
Volume
70
Year of publication
1997
Part
4
Pages
307 - 324
Database
ISI
SICI code
0963-1798(1997)70:<307:TEOOPJ>2.0.ZU;2-1
Abstract
Studies investigating the transference of stress have shown that occup ational stressors are transmitted from the job incumbent to a cohabiti ng partner, affecting not only his/her physical and psychological heal th but life expectancy as well. These studies remain limited in that t hey are based on simple bivariate correlations and hence are open to t he criticism that: (i) causality has not been demonstrated; (ii) the o bserved correlations may be due to uncontrolled confounding influences . This study aims to overcome these limitations by using a longitudina l design where job characteristics 'naturally', but: predictably, fluc tuate to identify the causal relationship between one partner's job an d the other partner's distress. The sample comprised 82 Navy couples ( 54 sea-based and 28 shore-based personnel). The job stressors under in vestigation included the deployment of the seagoing partner and his pe rceptions of job characteristics (role ambiguity, conflict and work ov erload). Both the impact on partner well-being of object ive and subje ctive perceptions of job characteristics were included in che present study. The results showed that the well-being of the partners who rema in at home fluctuates as a function of deployment-status and the marin ers' perceptions of their job characteristics. It is concluded chat th e seagoing partners' job characteristics do have a causal influence on the well-being of their partners.