published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

The individual's ability to balance between family and work depends on social support from the individual's environment. Social support has been shown to be an important source for an individual's well-being. The purpose of this study was to study Family-to-Work Conflict (FWC) in Sweden in order to discover: which preferences have participants regarding the sources of social support during the FWC: society, family, work? A questionnaire based on the WAFCS scale was answered by 350 participants between 18-65 years who were living in Sweden, of whom 172 women. Participants reported a low level of FWC, partly explained by their life priorities and social support from the society. Despite this they did not consider society as a primary source of support. Results showed that the family is no longer a single cause for the FWC but accepted by the participants as an important supportive source. During the study gender and age-related differences were also found.

The problem with which this study is concerned is that of a descriptive analysis of counseling techniques being used by selected child welfare workers. The method determining the counseling techniques being used was a questionnaire. Seven counseling techniques were tested on the questionnaire. The questionnaire was developed through the use of various sources. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire were not tested. The findings were inconclusive, based upon the data. The workers tended to show eclectic use of techniques. Psychoanalysis and client-centered therapy did poll the greatest number of positive responses. Z-scores and probability between the counseling techniques were determined. The findings supported the responses received by psychoanalysis and client-centered therapy. No recommendations were made.

The diploma thesis deals with the status of women and opportunities for women in the labour market. The thesis focuses on harmonization of work and family life for women in terms of promoting the use of two concepts in the European labour market: (1) the concept of flexicurity and (2) the concept of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility, also: CSR). The thesis aims to explore the possibility of harmonizing family and work life in the Czech Republic in terms of these two concepts and their degree of usage and their potential future use and enforcement. The situation of women in the labour market and the possibility of reconciling work and family life are a statistical examination of data on the Czech Republic and my own research, which are set in a European context.

Thesis advisor: Christina Matz / Retirement is a significant transition in an individual’s life course. More and more people are working past traditional retirement ages. Planning before retirement has been shown to relate to a number of positive outcomes and lead to a smoother transition to a retired life, such as more retirement savings, better retirement satisfaction, better social life, health, and mental health. However, most of the studies about retirement to date have focused on the impact of health and wealth in preparing for a successful retirement. This dissertation examines three issues related to retirement planning and expectations: (1) How do work and family relationships relate to having a plan to reduce or stop work and expected retirement timing in late life, and are there gender and occupational differences in these relationships? (2) How do workplace experiences relate to expectations to retire earlier or later than what is normative in different occupations? (3) Does sense of control explain the relationship between involuntary retirement and retirement satisfaction? To answer the three questions, the author adopts the role theory, the age norm theory, and the theory of self-efficacy to explain the background and findings. The data for this dissertation comes from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative dataset that captures the information about the health and retirement issues among adults over age 50 in the U.S. This proposed study uses pooled cross-sectional data from waves 2012 and 2014. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and logistic regression were used to examine the effect of work and family relationships and the plans/retirement timing of pre-retirees. Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine workplace factors that contribute to the non-normative retirement age expectations. Mediation analysis was used to study how personal mastery, perceived constraints, and domain-specific control mediates the relationship between involuntary retirement and retirement satisfaction. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.

MA research report - Student Number : 0105436V - School of Human and Community Development - Faculty of Arts / The present research study examines the possible relationship between students’ career decision-making self-efficacy (CDMSE) and their perceptions of their family members’ job satisfaction and job insecurity. The present research uses a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional research design, on a sample of 148 subjects drawn from a sample of first year Psychology students from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. The Career Decision Self-Efficacy scale was used to measure career decision-making self-efficacy (Betz & Taylor, 2001), Warr, Cook and Wall’s (1979) Overall Job Satisfaction scale to measure job satisfaction (Short, 1996) and the Job Insecurity scale developed by Ashford, Lee and Bobko (1989) to measure job insecurity. The statistical procedures used to analyse the data, included correlations to test the first hypothesis, which proposed a relationship between students’ CDSME and their perceptions of their family members’ job satisfaction and the second hypothesis, assumed a relationship between students’ CDMSE and their family members’ job insecurity. A Stepwise Multiple Regression was performed to examine the above hypotheses. The results reported a significant relationship between students’ CDMSE and their perceptions of their family members’ job satisfaction. However, there was insufficient evidence to support the relationship between students’ CDMSE and their perceptions of their family members’ job insecurity.

Although there is still a gender division of labour in post-industrial countries, evidence seems to suggest that there are some fathers more involved than others, and interestingly, a growing number of fathers that want to be more involved with their children. Using the Catalan Survey on the Use of Time, this thesis aims to understand how paternal time devoted to children under 10 years old differs across educational level, income, age, number of (paid) working hours, occupation and partner’s occupation among other independent variables. Understanding patterns of those fathers involved with their children will presumably give some clues on how to promote gender equality in parenting. Furthermore, it will contribute to the fatherhood literature by expanding the research to Catalonia. Furthermore, while we know that fatherhood involvement is positively related with child outcomes and gender equality, less is known about the benefits of having both work and family roles for working fathers themselves and their jobs. Using the conceptual framework of WFE elaborated by Greenhaus and Powell (2006), this thesis seeks to explore how resources developed at home are positively transferred and applied at work, and vice versa. For that aim, 20 interviews with Catalan working fathers have been conducted. Understanding and shedding light on these hidden sources of enrichment between work and family domains might be a positive way to challenge the disproportionate attention to the conflict perspective in the work-family literature and to counteract the benefits of the “ideal worker” and “organization man”. The methodological contribution of this thesis is that it is the first study to use the Catalan Survey on the Use of Time to look at fathers as well as offering one of the first qualitative studies to examine the work-family enrichment process for fathers. Regarding the empirical contribution, the analysis of the time use data reveals that father’s age, educational level and partner’s occupation is positively associated with paternal time devoted to children. On the other hand, working hours is negatively associated with time devoted to young children. The qualitative analysis suggests that enrichment occurs under certain conditions. Interestingly, the sources of enrichment reported from family to work (invisible rewards) were different from the sources of enrichment reported from work to family. This thesis also suggested that fathers employed in higher-levels occupation were more likely to experience high levels of enrichment, but at the same time high levels of conflict.