Division of family work: Evaluations and social comparisons

The research project deals with psychological aspects of the multiple loads of family and professional work of dual-earner couples with young children. How do young parents feel about and deal with the multiple demands? What are the consequences of the multiple work load for individual persons, the relationship between the partners, and the family? Which variables mediate and moderate the occurrence and strength of these consequences of the multiple work load? The focus of the project is on the division of family work within couples. Family work and its division are important aspects of how couples deal with their situation: The more unequal the division is, the more difficult is the situation for the partner with the higher effort - traditionally the woman. The project investigates the role of subjective appraisals of the division of family work for various possible consequences of the work load and its division. Two particular kinds of appraisals are in the focus: Evaluations of justice and social comparisons of the division of family work. The project pursues several goals. First, the identification of links between evaluations of justice concerning the division of family work and individual well-being and relationship satisfaction. Special attention will be given to long-term links and their likely causal directions. Second, due to an outstanding feature of the available data, the predictive validity of two different kinds of measures, i.e. retrospective evaluations and in-situ evaluations of justice, will be compared for the very first time. Third, the investigation of social comparisons that people make with respect to the division of family work, and the role of such comparisons for feelings of injustice about the division of family work and for relationship satisfaction. The present project is part of a collaboration of research teams from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The data sets from all three countries will be analyzed separately for each country and, additionally, as a combined data set. The project is designed as a longitudinal study with two waves, the time interval being about 24 months. The first wave of data collection has already been done in a preceding project. The second wave will be conducted within the present project. In the first wave, a subsample of the participants has been surveyed with two different methods: A questionnaire survey and a computer-assisted daily diary survey over one week. The particular methodological design of the project has several outstanding assets. The longitudinal nature of the study will provide information about the causal direction of links between the variables of interest and permits to investigate long-term links between the multiple work load and various consequences. Comparisons of the results obtained with the two different methods of data collection will provide evidence on the differential validity of retrospectively collected questionnaire data and data that have been collected in situ with a computer-assisted daily diary survey. The availability of several national data sets permits testing the degree to which the results can be generalized across countries.

The research project deals with psychological aspects of the multiple loads of family and professional work of dual-earner couples with young children. How do young parents feel about and deal with the multiple demands? What are the consequences of the multiple work load for individual persons, the relationship between the partners, and the family? Which variables mediate and moderate the occurrence and strength of these consequences of the multiple work load? The focus of the project is on the division of family work within couples. Family work and its division are important aspects of how couples deal with their situation: The more unequal the division is, the more difficult is the situation for the partner with the higher effort - traditionally the woman. The project investigates the role of subjective appraisals of the division of family work for various possible consequences of the work load and its division. Two particular kinds of appraisals are in the focus: Evaluations of justice and social comparisons of the division of family work. The project pursues several goals. First, the identification of links between evaluations of justice concerning the division of family work and individual well-being and relationship satisfaction. Special attention will be given to long-term links and their likely causal directions. Second, due to an outstanding feature of the available data, the predictive validity of two different kinds of measures, i.e. retrospective evaluations and in-situ evaluations of justice, will be compared for the very first time. Third, the investigation of social comparisons that people make with respect to the division of family work, and the role of such comparisons for feelings of injustice about the division of family work and for relationship satisfaction. The present project is part of a collaboration of research teams from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The data sets from all three countries will be analyzed separately for each country and, additionally, as a combined data set. The project is designed as a longitudinal study with two waves, the time interval being about 24 months. The first wave of data collection has already been done in a preceding project. The second wave will be conducted within the present project. In the first wave, a subsample of the participants has been surveyed with two different methods: A questionnaire survey and a computer-assisted daily diary survey over one week. The particular methodological design of the project has several outstanding assets. The longitudinal nature of the study will provide information about the causal direction of links between the variables of interest and permits to investigate long-term links between the multiple work load and various consequences. Comparisons of the results obtained with the two different methods of data collection will provide evidence on the differential validity of retrospectively collected questionnaire data and data that have been collected in situ with a computer-assisted daily diary survey. The availability of several national data sets permits testing the degree to which the results can be generalized across countries.