One key focus in the 21st century is adjusting work and personal life in order for individuals
to find a rhythm to help them combine work with other responsibilities and aspirations in
their personal lives. Over the past few decades it has become evident that work and personal
life are interrelated domains and that employed individuals experience interaction between
these domains. Although the amount and extent of work-family research studies in South
Africa have progressed considerably over the past decade, it is not clear how the experiences
of the interference between work and nonwork roles compare to the experiences of
employees in other countries. There is also no South Africa instrument that measures the
interference between work and different nonwork roles in both directions (work-to-nonwork
and nonwork-to-work). This could pose potential problems for organisations and future workfamily
studies in South Africa.
The objectives of this research were 1) to gain insight into the interaction between work and
personal life in the South African context and how South African employees experience this
interaction; 2) to develop a new work-nonwork interference instrument that is suitable for the
South African context and that addresses measurement and theoretical issues relating to
previous work-family instruments; and 3) to test the psychometric properties of the newly
developed work-nonwork interference instrument.
The empirical study consisted of three phases. During the first phase, exploratory interviews
(i.e. 92 interviews) were conducted in order to gather information regarding the interaction
that individuals experience between their work and their personal lives. Thereafter, a new
instrument that measures work-nonwork interference was developed and tested with a pilot
study (n = 245) in order to overcome some of the measurement limitations relating to
previous work-family instruments. During the final phase, the psychometric properties of the newly developed work-nonwork interference instrument were tested (Le. construct validity,
discriminant validity, convergent validity and external validity; n = 366).
Results from the exploratory phase indicated that South African employees experience
various forms of interaction between their work and other dimensions in their personal life
(e.g. domestic, leisure, exercise, studies, community, extended family and
religion/spirituality). In addition, South African employees experience various stressors in
their work environment that contribute to this interaction (i.e. general stressors such as
pressure, overload, workload, stressful working arrangements, and strenuous relationships at
work, and more occupation-specific stressors such as stressful nature of the job and not being
valued in an unsupportive work environment). Additional supportive aspects present in their
work environment included supportive work arrangements, supportive relationships at work
and occupation satisfaction. Results also indicated consequences specifically related to all the
forms of interaction (e.g. time-based consequences, build-up and spillover of emotions, and
energy depletion) and consequences that are more related to a specific form of interaction
(e.g. mental preoccupation, strain on relationships, managing responsibilities, limiting of
work opportunities, energy generation, learned skills). From the exploratory study, very
similar findings were obtained and some unique contributions were made to existing workfamily
literature. The antecedents mentioned are in line with international literature (physical
workload, time pressures, physical stressors, shift work and recipient contact) and the
consequences are very similar to categorised consequences reported in international research
(i.e. physical, psychological, behavioural, attitudinal, organisational consequences or work,
nonwork and health-related consequences).
During the second phase a new work-nonwork interference (W-NWI) instrument was
developed which differentiates among interference between work and various specific roles
in an individuals' personal life (i.e. work-parent interference, parent-work interference, workspouse
interference, spouse-work interference, work-religion/spirituality interference,
religion/spirituality-work interference, work-domestic interference, domestic-work
interference). During the evaluation study various problematic items were eliminated using
the Rasch measurement model. The fmal phase included the validation study where the
psychometric properties of the new instrument were investigated. The results provided
evidence for constrUct, discriminant and convergent validity, reliability and significant
relations with external variables. Tills study provides evidence for the psychometric properties of the new instrument, which
researchers and managers can use to investigate the specmc interference between work and
different nonwork roles in employees' private lives.
Recommendations for future research were made. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NWUBOLOKA1/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/4283 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Koekemoer, Frieda Eileen |
| Publisher | North-West University |
| Source Sets | North-West University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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