Changes in work and family roles as more women are
entering the work force prompt a re-examination of how
couples make work and family decisions. Research confirms
that influence is an important component of the decision-making
process. Because of the recent changes in women's
paid work roles, women may now use more influence strategies
than when they were not in the paid work force in such large
numbers. From a family decision-making perspective,
investigations of the different influence strategies used in
making work and family decisions have not occurred in past
research. The purpose of this study was to investigate how
couples make work and family decisions, examining the impact
of gender role traditionality and influence strategies used
in decision making. In addition, the association between
influence strategies with marital satisfaction was
investigated.
The sample of this study consisted of 61 couples who
had made a work and family decision in the past 6 months. A
mail questionnaire was developed assessing the husbands' and
wives' use of different influence strategies from Spiro
(1983), their gender role traditionality, their satisfaction
of the outcome of the decision, and marital satisfaction.
The first research question addressed gender role
traditionality and influence strategies. Pearson's
correlations indicate that traditional wives were more
likely to use reward\referent influence than nontraditional
wives and that traditional husbands were more likely to use
legitimate influence than nontraditional husbands. Also,
the connection between gender role traditionality, influence
strategies, and decision making satisfaction was
investigated. Using hierarchial regression, decision
outcome satisfaction accounted for 24 percent of the
variance in wives' marital satisfaction. Furthermore,
prediction of wives' marital satisfaction was improved 16
percent with the inclusion of influence strategies and
gender role ideology to the model. Results for wives found
their marital satisfaction to be greater if they used less
emotional and legitimate influence but more reward\referent
and impression management influences.
A similar model was attempted on husband's marital
satisfaction with decision making satisfaction, influence
strategies, and gender role traditionality. This model
accounted for 8 percent of the variance.
These findings suggest that a relationship exists
between gender role traditionality and the use of different
influence strategies for both husbands and wives. For
wives, decision making satisfaction, the use of different
influence strategies, and gender role ideology all had an
effect on their marital satisfaction. / Graduation date: 1991
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/37544 |
| Date | 06 November 1990 |
| Creators | Leier, Elaine M. |
| Contributors | Zvonkovic, Anisa M. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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