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The relationship of work addiction and depression, anxiety, and anger in college males

Since there are no known instruments which assess work addiction, the Workaholic Adjective Checklist (WAC) (1992), was developed from an item pool of attributes reported in the literature. The WAC was used to identify constructs comprising the syndrome of workaholism, and to relate these constructs to the emotional characteristics of depression, anxiety and anger. Two hundred fifty-three college males, enrolled in an introductory psychology course, volunteered to take the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, 1978), the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Form Y) (Spielberger, 1977), the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI) (Spielberger, 1988), and the WAC. / These data were divided into subsets. Data for the first subset (n = 146) were used for further development of the WAC. Data for the second subset (n = 107) were reserved for hypotheses testing and cross validation. / Five orthogonal and independent constructs were identified through principle factoring with varimax rotation, and were labeled: Anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive, Mania, Intolerance and Self-doubt. The factor structure was replicated on the second data subset and explained 74.1% of variance. Alpha coefficients varied from.61 to.83 with a mean of.71. / These five constructs were then regressed on the emotional characteristics of depression, state anxiety, trait anxiety, state anger and trait anger. Significant multiple R's (p $<$.001) were demonstrated on each analysis. Contrasts were also made between subjects who scored within the upper third and those who scored within the lower third of total scores on the WAC with respect to the above emotional characteristics. Significant differences were found between these two groups on all emotional characteristics except trait anger. / On an item in the WAC, which described attributes of workaholics, 17% of the subjects classified themselves as workaholic. Of these, 83.3% were correctly classified in a discriminate analysis using the WAC. Of those who did not classify themselves as workaholic, 88.8% were correctly classified. / These preliminary findings appear to have illuminated the syndrome of workaholism. Additionally, these findings should serve as a vehicle to pursue future research into the refinement and possible application of the WAC. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-01, Section: B, page: 0475. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76831
ContributorsHaymon, Sandra Wauthena., Florida State University
Source SetsFlorida State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText
Format313 p.
RightsOn campus use only.
RelationDissertation Abstracts International

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