The Differential Effect of Anticipated Work-Family Conflict on the STEM Major Embeddedness of Men and Women

<p>It is nationally concerning that many students who begin as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) majors do not complete their degrees. Of additional concern is that among the STEM students who do persist to degree completion, women are severely underrepresented. The present research investigates the extent to which anticipated conflicts between work and family life (AWFC) are negatively related to students’ embeddedness in their STEM majors, especially the STEM embeddedness of women. The hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling in Mplus-7 with a sample of 218 STEM students from an archival database. As hypothesized, work-family decision making self-efficacy had a negative relationship with both anticipated work interference with family (AWIF) and anticipated family interference with work (AFIW). Notably, only AFIW was negatively related to major embeddedness and only the indirect effect of WFSE on major embeddedness through AFIW was positive and significant, partially supporting each corresponding hypothesis. Additionally, the relationships among study variables did not significantly differ by gender. However, the relationship between AFIW and major embeddedness approached significance for women. Implications of this research, future directions, and study limitations are discussed.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MS)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Myers, Dante P.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Debra A. Major
• Xiaoxiao Hu
• Cathy Lau-Barraco

• Anticipated work-family conflict
• Embeddness
• STEM majors
• Psychology

Statement dc:rights

• <p>In Copyright. URI: <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).</p>

Identifier

9781339040882

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.odu.edu:psychology_etds-1008