The purpose of this research was to revise the Male Rape Myths Scale (MRMS; Kerr Melanson, 1999) and gather psychometric information using the gender role strain paradigm (GRSP; Pleck, 1991, 1995) as a theoretical framework in samples of U.S. undergraduate students. I provided evidence for a 16-item revised version of the MRMS (MRMS-R) across three studies. The MRMS items were first revised based on the results of a pilot study and expert reviews. Exploratory factor analyses revealed a correlated two-factor model: (1) Marginalization and Homophobia and (2) Victim Blame and Denial of Trauma. Results of the confirmatory factor analyses provided support for bifactor and correlated two-factor models of the MRMS-R. Criterion validity was supported based on (a) differences in MRMS-R scores between men and women and (b) lower scores for participants who reported experiencing a sexual assault. MRMS-R scores were also correlated with victim blaming responses to case vignettes and female rape myth acceptance in the expected directions. Construct validity was further demonstrated by correlations between MRMS-R scores and measures of traditional gender role attitudes, homonegativity toward gay men, and patriarchal beliefs. Further, the bifactor model met criteria for measurement invariance between male and female groups. The total and subscale scores had high internal consistency estimates of reliability. Results provided preliminary support for the use of the MRMS-R as an updated measure of male rape myth agreement among college student populations, and clarified links to other gender-related constructs. Limitations, implications, and recommendations for future research are also discussed.

Thesis advisor: Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes / The majority of family caregivers of older adults are also working for pay, and many experience work-family role conflict in managing both work and caregiving responsibilities. Work-family role conflict is associated with poorer psychological and physical health, which interferes with their ability to provide optimal care. Informed by role theory, this dissertation uses a randomized national sample of caregivers of older adults (N=465) to address the relationships between workplace characteristics, workplace flexibility, work-family role conflict, and caregiver stress. While much research has explored the work-family interface, few studies have investigated the workplace characteristics and work-family role conflict exclusively among caregivers of older adults. Additionally, the few studies exploring the relationship between workplace flexibility and stress among caregivers of older adults have yielded inconsistent findings. Results indicate that workplace characteristics associated with work-family role conflict among caregivers of older adults include supervisor support, work overload, work hours, and perceptions of a family-supportive work environment. A significant interaction effect between caregiving frequency (weekly vs. intermittent) indicates that while workplace flexibility is associated with decreased work-family conflict among those providing care intermittently, this association is not found for those providing care on a regular, weekly basis. A second set of analyses limited to regular, weekly caregivers (N=211) finds that work-family role conflict mediates the relationship between workplace flexibility and caregiver stress. This suggests that workplace flexibility may only benefit caregivers when work-family conflict is mitigated or reduced. Workplace flexibility is not associated with stress among caregivers in fair or poor health; caregivers struggling with their own health issues may need additional supports to manage work and family demands. These findings can inform the efforts of policymakers and practitioners working to promote the well-being of family caregivers of older adults. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.

<p>Vi arbetar idag mindre tid än vad den arbetande människan gjort under tidigare årtionden, och många hävdar att vi måste arbeta mer för att vi ska kunna bibehålla vår standard. Men sammantaget, betalt och obetalt arbete, sett ur en familjs perspektiv arbetar många väldigt mycket idag, och med högt ställda krav både på jobbet och i hemmet.Ett antal försök med förkortad arbetstid har gjorts på olika arbetsplatser i landet, de flesta inom kommun och landsting, men få har genomförts med både för- och efterstudie. Vi har i vår studie utgått från den arbetstidsförkortning som genomfördes på Radiumhemmet 2003 där vi genomförde en förstudie där alla som skulle delta i försöket fick svara på en enkät innan projektet påbörjades. När projektet pågått tre månader skickade vi ut ytterligare en enkät till deltagarna. Utöver de som deltagit i projektet med arbetstidsförkortning har vi även genomfört motsvarande studie med en kontrollgrupp bestående av sjuksköterskor som arbetade med normal arbetstid. Vi har i vår undersökning fokuserat på Karaseks krav- och kontrollmodell och deltagarnas välbefinnande före och efter införandet av arbetstids-förkortningen. Frågorna vi har använt oss av utgår från samma som i undersökningarna av levnadsförhållanden (ULF). Eftersom vi också tror att, hur vi använder vår fritid påverkar hur vi mår på vårt arbete, har vi utöver Karaseks krav/kontrollmodell, också använt oss av The role strain theory då vi har studerat hur deltagarna har använt sin nyvunna fria tid och ställt dessa svar i relation till hur nöjda de var med sina nya arbetstider.Resultaten av vår studie visade att arbetstidsförkortningen inneburit ökade krav såsom att arbetet blivit mer jäktigt och att den psykiska stressen hade ökat samtidigt som kontrollen hade minskat då det blivit svårare att hinna med sina arbetsuppgifter. Trots detta visade resultaten att den kortare arbetstiden kan lätta den totala arbetsbördan genom att frigöra tid till annat än betalt arbete, såsom hushålls- och hemarbete samt fritidssysselsättningar och på så sätt öka individens välbefinnande.</p>

Vi arbetar idag mindre tid än vad den arbetande människan gjort under tidigare årtionden, och många hävdar att vi måste arbeta mer för att vi ska kunna bibehålla vår standard. Men sammantaget, betalt och obetalt arbete, sett ur en familjs perspektiv arbetar många väldigt mycket idag, och med högt ställda krav både på jobbet och i hemmet.Ett antal försök med förkortad arbetstid har gjorts på olika arbetsplatser i landet, de flesta inom kommun och landsting, men få har genomförts med både för- och efterstudie. Vi har i vår studie utgått från den arbetstidsförkortning som genomfördes på Radiumhemmet 2003 där vi genomförde en förstudie där alla som skulle delta i försöket fick svara på en enkät innan projektet påbörjades. När projektet pågått tre månader skickade vi ut ytterligare en enkät till deltagarna. Utöver de som deltagit i projektet med arbetstidsförkortning har vi även genomfört motsvarande studie med en kontrollgrupp bestående av sjuksköterskor som arbetade med normal arbetstid. Vi har i vår undersökning fokuserat på Karaseks krav- och kontrollmodell och deltagarnas välbefinnande före och efter införandet av arbetstids-förkortningen. Frågorna vi har använt oss av utgår från samma som i undersökningarna av levnadsförhållanden (ULF). Eftersom vi också tror att, hur vi använder vår fritid påverkar hur vi mår på vårt arbete, har vi utöver Karaseks krav/kontrollmodell, också använt oss av The role strain theory då vi har studerat hur deltagarna har använt sin nyvunna fria tid och ställt dessa svar i relation till hur nöjda de var med sina nya arbetstider.Resultaten av vår studie visade att arbetstidsförkortningen inneburit ökade krav såsom att arbetet blivit mer jäktigt och att den psykiska stressen hade ökat samtidigt som kontrollen hade minskat då det blivit svårare att hinna med sina arbetsuppgifter. Trots detta visade resultaten att den kortare arbetstiden kan lätta den totala arbetsbördan genom att frigöra tid till annat än betalt arbete, såsom hushålls- och hemarbete samt fritidssysselsättningar och på så sätt öka individens välbefinnande.

With dual-career couples comprising the most common family type, it is important for mental health professionals, employers, and policy makers to understand the unique challenges of this population (Haddock et al., 2001; Saginak & Saginak, 2005.) Numerous researchers have studied the consequences of family and work role strain for dual-career couples. However, when dual-career couples are able to share responsibilities and negotiate degendered roles they experience the benefits of dual-career couples. The literature clearly supports the importance of egalitarian roles for marital satisfaction and life satisfaction of dual-career couples. While researchers have studied social role strain, gender role strain, marital satisfaction, and life satisfaction and discussed the importance of degendered roles and responsibilities for dual-career couples, no studies have examined gender ideology. Saginak and Saginak (2005) called for researchers to investigate how gender ideologies and the gender socialization process perpetuate the challenges faced by dual-career couples in balancing work and family. This study investigated the associations between gender ideology and gender role strain, job-family role strain, marital satisfaction, and life satisfaction among 70 individual members of dual-career couples. A multivariate analysis of variance was utilized to investigate the relationship between gender ideology and the criterion measures. Gender ideology was partially associated with gender role strain with the androgynous gender ideology group scoring significantly lower on gender role strain than the masculine or undifferentiated gender ideology groups but not significantly lower than the feminine gender ideology group. Gender ideology was not associated with job-family role strain or marital satisfaction. In addition, gender ideology was also partially associated with life satisfaction with the androgynous gender ideology group scoring significantly higher on quality of life than the masculine or undifferentiated gender ideology groups but not significantly higher than the feminine gender ideology group. Thus, the current study indicates there are partial associations between gender ideology and gender role strain and life satisfaction for dual-career couples. Mental health professionals, employers, and policy makers working with dual-career couples should assess the socially constructed gender norms and expectations internalized by individuals into a gender ideology as the possible source of challenges experienced by the dual-career couple.

Thesis advisor: Lisa Dodson / Thesis advisor: C. Shawn McGuffey / Non-traditional students are quickly becoming a statistical majority of the undergraduate student population. Furthermore, nearly one-quarter of contemporary undergraduates is a student parent. Emergent imperatives shaped by technological changes in the economy, deindustrialization, credential inflation, the continuing feminization of poverty and the diminished safety net for low-income families have created a mandate for postsecondary education for anyone hoping to move from poverty into the middle-class. Yet, welfare reforms of the past 17 years have de-prioritized, discouraged, and disallowed post-secondary education as a meaningful pathway for low-income parents to achieve economic mobility, even despite a large body of research demonstrating the connections between higher education and: income, occupational prestige, access to employer sponsored benefits, positive intergenerational outcomes, community development, and broader societal gains. While previous research has focused on the impact of welfare reform on access to post-secondary education for participants within the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance program, declining overall TANF participation rates indicate that low-income families are largely turning to more diverse strategies to support their families and pursue higher education. Despite both the recent growth of the population of student parents as a significant minority of the undergraduate population, and the rise of governmental initiatives promoting the expansion of post-secondary education and training to traditionally underserved student populations, very little is known about the comprehensive experiences of contemporary low-income mothers as they navigate college while simultaneously working to balance these endeavors with motherhood and family labor, paid employment and public assistance requirements. This dissertation presents the findings of a multi-method institutional ethnographic research process through which the author collected data regarding the experiences of low-income mothers across the country. This process included conducting in-depth interviews with 31 low-income mothers who were currently enrolled in college or who had been enrolled in college within the past year. Additionally, research journals were collected from an additional 20 participants documenting their experiences across an academic term. In total these participants represented 10 states in three regions of the United States: The West Coast, Mid-West, and Northeast. Secondary data were collected through: institutional interviews with student parent program coordinators, collection of primary materials from programs serving student parents throughout the country, and review of primary policy documents regarding higher education and federal and state welfare policies. As a feminist participatory action research project, participatory methods were employed at all stages of the research process and included the use of two interpretive focus groups within campus-based programs serving student parents that both added to the research findings and to the process of analysis and interpretation. The findings of this dissertation begin by painting the picture of the complex lifeworlds of low-income mothers and their simultaneous experience of role strain and material hardship as they work to balance the responsibilities of college enrollment with mothering, work, and the labor involved in researching, applying for and maintaining multiple public assistance benefits. Next, the author argues that conflicts between higher education policies and public assistance policies as experienced by participants shape the strategies through which they attempt to make ends meet and finance their education and ultimately exacerbate their experiences of role strain and material hardship. The author then moves to explore the impact that these policies have on academic outcomes for this sub-set of students. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the broader social context in which this takes place: one in which policies have been structured on meritocracy rather than equal opportunity for higher education. This presents a dual-edge sword scenario however in that the American Dream both drives the motivation of low-income mothers to persevere in college despite tremendous hardship and personal sacrifice, while it also serves to frame the very policies that make their quest for higher education so grueling. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of male victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). Few studies exist about the experiences of men who are victims of female-perpetrated IPV and there are not many studies about these men's experiences in seeking and receiving psychological help. Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Peck's gender role strain paradigm guided this study to understand victimology and perceptions of gender roles. Research questions attempted to understand the lived experiences of male IPV victims of female-perpetrated IPV, accessing supportive and psychological services, and their experiences of these services. Seven male individuals were recruited through flyers in community centers, law enforcement agencies, and social media sites; 5 participants were interviewed via Skype and 2 responded via e-mail. Data from interviews were analyzed and coded following an interpretative phenomenological method. Five themes were identified from 2 research questions including: male victimization is seen as less severe than female victimization, family is not easy to talk to about experience, therapy and hospitalization were used, law enforcement officers are biased, and mental health workers are routine. Findings were evaluated with existing literature and suggestions are made for help-seeking option accessibility for male victims. This study promotes social change by discussing how supporting survivors may decrease negative gender roles and social norms while promoting the betterment of professionals who work with male victims. Victim-centered services, patient-centered approaches, and treatment and support for survivors of IPV will help to improve awareness about male victims in society while offering insight to decrease negative stigma.

Although researchers have begun to show critical interest in men as gendered beings, there has been little in-depth theoretical analysis or scholarly development in the area. Most writing has focused only on defining the problems of men's destructiveness and emotional illiteracy. Virtually no attempts have been made to develop theoretical models capable of cultivating alternative, more psychologically and socially adaptive patterns of male behaviour, identity formation, development and social role acquisition. A small purposively drawn sample of eight profeminist men (nominated by prominent self-declared feminists in the community), along with one men's rights activist, were asked to recount their personal experiences involving gender issues during unstructured interviews. Intensive qualitative analysis, drawing on phenomenological, reflexive postmodern/constructionist and postpositivist/grounded theory techniques, was used to interpret and organize the data into groups of related constructs, which were refined, organized and re-organized according to the emerging schematic model. This model illustrates the complex developmental process of personal profeminist change and social transformation experienced by the nine men interviewed. Their life experiences are presented in separate chapters along with highlighted/annotated variations of the developmental model derived from the interpretive analysis. Analysis revealed that participants were either raised in traditional, patriarchal families or in less traditional, less clearly defined, androgynous family environments. Although both groups of men experienced aspects of gender role strain or incongruence, men raised in patriarchal environments seemed to experience greater strain and more difficulty working through conflicts arising from recent challenges to their masculinity. From an early age, the androgynous men appeared to successfully integrate conflict and shame within the context of rich relationships established under both patriarchal and feminist influences. Only recently challenged by feminism, the men raised exclusively in patriarchy seemed stuck in a somewhat more confusing, vulnerable space between patriarchy and feminism. Several of the more androgynous men acknowledged this gap, and worked to bridge it in their communities by forming alliances and creating synergy through a process of conflict engagement and conflict resolution. As suggested by the men's experiences and the resulting model, integrating gender-related conflict in the contest of a firm, yet compassionate and synergistic community was key to congruent profeminist experience. The strengths, limitations and implications of the model developed herein are discussed in relation to current theory on masculinity, male development and men's role infeminism. Although the model was developed on the basis of intensive analysis of only a small sample of men, it is consistent with current theory and promises to inform psychotherapeutic technique in counselling men.

Although various approaches to psychotherapy have been applied to The Remains of the Day in the aforementioned analyses, none have linked it to Role Theory, as defined in the context of Psychodrama. However if the abnormal importance that Stevens attributes to becoming a perfect butler is taken into account, The Remains of the Day is practically saturated with textual evidence of how social role imbalance is the source of Stevens’ dilemmas both in the narrated and the narrating time. Although whether it was Ishiguro’s intention to create this effect is unclear, the setting of the novel in a world that is transitioning from the war eras to modernity moreover fits in all too well with the sociological aspects of Role Theory. In brief, it has been proposed that changes in society that render certain social roles obsolete put pressure on the individuals that hold these roles to either adapt or renew themselves in pace with societal developments. Stevens, being a butler, would have felt such strain acutely, being that the decline of the great British houses over the aforementioned period led to a sharp decline in domestic service professions at the time. (Lee, 1988)Drawing upon both the Psycho-dramatic and the Sociologic aspects of Role Theory, this paper aims first of all to propose that Ishiguro’s main character in The Remains of the Day suffers from an over-developed occupational role, which has eliminated or at the very least marginalized his other social roles. Secondly it will argue that the latter’s’ reflections that are brought about over the course of the plot are a consequence of role strain, which as a palpable yet indirect plot element forces him realize that his occupational role is slowly but steadily becoming a thing of the past. In facing such a fate, he is in turn forced to confront how his extreme commitment to his job has left the rest of his life empty, for which he begins to look back at and reconsider the roles that he could have had but neglected in life. On top of outlining this approach to rationalizing the events of the novel, the paper will theorize upon that in choosing to tell such a story, Ishiguro is promoting a view of the world as a place in constant motion, in which, like the post-modernist perspective, there are no set or universal values that withstand the test of time. Juxtaposed against the satirical undertones of the novel, as well as against the time period in which it is set, this statement will in turn be interpreted as critique against the destructive qualities of conventions in society.

The purpose of this study is to assess the extent to which affiliation with a university research center affects how university scientists allocate their work time across their many academic tasks and responsibilities, including research, teaching, student advising, grants and contracts work, and service and committee duties. The key proposition is that institutional variation across university research centers can affect greatly how center affiliated university scientists allocate their work time insofar as some center level characteristics are more conducive than are others to role strain, which is the structural circumstance (Merton 1957) wherein an individual is beholden to center and departments norms and expectations that are divergent. The concept of role strain befits analysis of the impact of center affiliation on university scientists time allocations insofar as it provides a structural framework with which to characterize the time constraints that center scientists face as a result of being dually obligated to a center and an academic department. Moreover, study at the organizational level of analysis emphasizes competition and even conflict between university research centers and academic departments over the scarce resource of faculty time (Geiger 1990, Stahler and Tash 1994, Mallon 2004). This study uses data from a national survey of university scientists as well as data from interviews with university scientists who affiliate with National Science Foundation Engineering Research Centers or Science and Technology Centers. Survey results demonstrate that a centers size, multidisciplinarity, organization within the university, programmatic ties, and external relations increase the time allocated to research, grants and contracts work, and service and committee duties. These findings constitute objective evidence of center induced role strain (Pandey and Kumar 1997, Rizzo et al. 1970) insofar as they identify components of center scientists work environments suggestive of center and department norms and expectations being divergent and even conflicting. Interview results demonstrate similarly that when a center has no ties to an academic department and when its research focus is applied or commercially relevant, workload increases. These findings constitute subjective evidence of center induced role strain (Pandey and Kumar 1997, Kahn et al. 1964) insofar as it is the center scientists themselves observing these divergent norms and expectations. Implications for policy and theory are discussed.