Browsing by Subject "Work"
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Item A biomechanical investigation of the possibility of relating static and dynamic work by means of a common parameter(1968-06) Khalil, Tarek M.Not AvailableItem A comparative study of work motivation in selected occupation areas(Texas Tech University, 1965-08) Henry, Alan RayNot availableItem Beyond balance : examining work-family interface, role negotiation, and coping strategies for female caregivers in STEM(2016-08) Reilly, Erin Dawna; Awad, Germine H.; Rochlen, Aaron B.; Cokley, Kevin O; McCarthy, Christopher J; Walkow, Janet CThough the retention of female caregivers in STEM fields has become increasingly discussed, there is a lack of research investigating the major factors impacting their successful negotiation of work and family responsibilities and roles. This body of research examined the impact of societal roles, external support structures, and coping resources on work-family satisfaction and psychological well-being. In particular, this study investigated the following: (1) the relationships among work support, family support, coping, and satisfaction; (2) the relationship between family- and occupational-support, work-family conflict, and satisfaction; (3) coping resources as a mediator of the relationship between work-family conflict and work and family satisfaction, and; (4) the impact of internalizations of competing societal myths (i.e., the ideal worker myth and motherhood myth) as moderating the impact of work-family conflict on interpersonal guilt. Participants included 204 women in STEM fields who also reported caregiving responsibilities. The majority of the recruited sample identified as mothers, and reported approximately equal amounts of time spent on occupational responsibilities and caretaking work. Results indicate that women who reported higher levels of family support and occupational support tended to have higher levels work and family satisfaction, as well as greater perceived internal coping resources. In addition, women with greater perceived abilities to identify, predict, and plan for demands and possible stressors tended to have greater levels of family and work satisfaction. In terms of modeling work-family interface, women who reported higher levels of familial and career-climate support tended to also report greater perceived coping resources and abilities. However, the hypothesis that work-to-family and family-to-work conflict would significantly predict lower work satisfaction and family satisfaction was not supported when modeled alongside other variables (external support and coping). On the other hand, the hypothesis that the relationship between family-to-work conflict and work satisfaction was mediated by perceived coping resources was supported. Finally, results suggest that greater internalization of the motherhood myth, the ideal worker myth, and the presence of work-to-family conflict are associated with higher levels of guilt for female caregivers in STEM fields. Limitations, future research areas, and practical implications of these findings are discussed.Item Breastfeeding plans, intentions, and interactions(Texas Tech University, 2008-08) Thomas-Jackson, Shera C.; Hart, Sybil L.; Reifman, Alan; Boylan, Lee M.This study explores the relationships of demographics and psychosocial factors on breast feeding plans, intentions and mother-infant interactions. Breastfeeding provides many benefits to both mother and child, therefore, understanding the influences on breastfeeding decisions is important for understanding the breastfeeding relationship. This thesis explores the demographic influences on a woman’s breastfeeding practices and plans, and further explores the influence of psychosocial factors on intended breastfeeding duration. Women (N=160) were recruited within the first 48 hours post-partum from a county hospital in the southwestern United States. First, the relationship of demographics and psychosocial factors and their impact on a woman’s breastfeeding experience in the hospital, and her long term breastfeeding plans are explored. This relationship is explored with a path analysis using AMOS software (Arbuckle, 2006). Demographics variables including socio-economic status, maternal age, maternal education level, marital status, and ethnicity are factors used in this model. Psychosocial variables in the model include maternal depressive features and maternal-fetal attachment. Socio-economic status, maternal age, education, and marital status are related. In addition, women with higher socio-economic status and married have higher rates of exclusive breastfeeding following delivery. Women planning to return to work planned to breastfeed for fewer months, whereas women exclusively breastfeeding in the hospital planned to breastfeed for more months than women who provided formula supplementation in the hospital. Women with lower education level experienced more depressive features early postpartum. Depressive features did not impact feeding plans or intentions. A multiple group comparison was performed in order to compare marital status and ethnicity. No group differences were found in either comparison model. However, when comparing the married vs. unmarried model maternal-fetal attachment negatively predicted a woman’s plan to return to work. Psychosocial factors were not found to influence breastfeeding practices. In a 10-14 day follow-up study, using a sub-sample (N=45), the relationship of depressive features at 10-14 days and breastfeeding self-efficacy on duration of a videotaped feeding was explored. Women were interviewed and videotaped breastfeeding when the infant was 10-14 days old. A partial correlation was used to examine this relationship while controlling for demographic factors. Depressive features and breastfeeding self-efficacy do not have a relationship with the length of time a woman is available to breastfeed her infant or the amount of time an infant actually breastfeeds. Depressive features and breastfeeding self-efficacy do have a significant relationship. Women with higher depressive features were found to have lower breastfeeding self-efficacy.Item Chihuahua’s missing labor movement : the role of emotions in maquiladora work(2013-12) Márquez, Alejandro Márquez; Dietz, Henry A.The maquiladora industry was established in northern Mexico with the objective of providing employment opportunities to the growing population in the region. However, the terms of employment linked to the global economy limit the organizational capacity of workers to improve their working conditions. These terms shape an emotional habitus among maquiladora workers that prevents mobilization and reinforces a “hard-working” attitude predisposed to tolerate unsatisfactory labor relations concomitant with industrial deregulation. In my investigation, I analyze the emotional habitus of workers through cultural, productive, and political deregulation mechanisms employed in the sector. The cultural tool promotes a new labor philosophy focused on safeguarding employment sources in Mexico; production schemes individualize reward and punitive systems that are installed in constellations of local and international authoritative figures; and the political component prevents legitimate forms of organization through coopted labor unions. As a result, predispositions of workers to mobilize grievances in the maquiladora industry are unlikely. This report seeks to involve the social structures of emotions in discussions concerning political behavior and social movement literature.Item Daughtering and daughterhood : an explanatory study of the role of adult daughters in relation to mothers(2016-08) Alford, Allison McGuire; Maxwell, Madeline M.; Donovan, Erin; Menchaca, Martha; Vangelisti, AnitaThis study investigated the role of an adult daughter in mid-life, a time in a woman’s life when she has a personal relationship with her mother based upon shared interests more than dependence for care. Using interactional role theory (Turner, 2001), this study explored the understanding a daughter has for her role as an adult daughter in everyday encounters with her mother. Participants in this study described that when in situations that call for daughtering, they enact the adult daughter role. For this study, adult daughter participants (N = 33) ranging in age from 25-45 years old participated in face-to-face interviews to discuss their role as an adult daughter to their mothers. All participants had a living, healthy mother age 70 or younger. From daughters’ discussions of everyday communication with their mothers, layers of meaning were uncovered which related to the adult daughter role. Using role theory as a guide, thematic analysis revealed six themes of meaning. These findings contribute to an understanding of the social construction of an important role, which daughters learn over a lifetime and which they use to communicate within a family. Discussions of daughtering were challenging to participants due to borrowed vocabulary for describing this role, narrow role awareness, and a low valuation of the work of daughtering. When sorting role influences, daughters noted their mothers and a variety of other sources that inform role expectations. This finding prompted a new manner for evaluating daughters as a daughterhood, or community of role players collectively enacting the same role. Finally, participant responses revealed new ways to conceive of the social construction of the adult daughter role and the practice of daughtering and daughterhood, with outcomes including a variety of comportments for performing daughtering. Implications for future research by communication scholars, as well as for practitioners who work with adult daughter-mother pairs, will be presented with other results from this study.Item Does the earned income tax credit encourage or discourage work effort?: an empirical study(Texas Tech University, 1998-12) Anders, Susan BethThe purpose of this dissertation is to examine the effectiveness of the earned income tax credit (EITC) in meeting the objectives that Congress intended. The refundable EITC was first enacted in 1975 to reduce the burden of the Social Security tax for the working poor, to increase the progressivity of the tax system overall, and to increase the incentives of low-income individuals to work. A better understanding of the EITC is important because the credit is becoming the major government support for low income families, and the total expenditure on EITCs are expected to exceed total government spending on welfare. This study utilizes empirical analysis of actual individual income tax return data to evaluate EITC participants' and comparable nonparticipants' income over time for indications of statistically significant increases. The incomes of participants and nonparticipants are also compared cross-sectionally for evidence of a statistical difference over time. Observations are grouped into income classifications based on the income ranges of the credit: phase-in, plateau, and phase-out. Economic theory predicts a potential work incentive in the phase-in range and a potential work disincentive in the phase-out range. EITC participants' incomes are found to have increased significantly over the selected time windows during the 1979 to 1990 time period. The incomes for a comparable group of nonparticipants also increased significantly over the same time windows. Income growth for both participants and nonparticipants was greater in the phase-in range than in the phase-out range. There is generally no significant difference in the income growth between participants and nonparticipants until the time windows for 1987 to 1988 and for 1987 to 1990. In those periods, there is indication of a statistically significant association of the EITC with higher income growth for participants in the phase-in range. The differences in the income growth between participants and nonparticipants in the phase-out range is not statistically significant for any of the time periods. An association of the credit with a disincentive in the phase-out range cannot be inferred.Item Energy cost prediction models for manual lifting and lowering tasks(Texas Tech University, 1980-12) Asfour, Shihab SaadOne of the tasks that man is increasingly called upon to perform in modern industrial situations is manual materials handling. Despite the fact that industrial processes have become more automatic, still millions of tons of goods and materials are being handled and lifted manually. The need for manual materials handling may be dictated either by the type of the task performed or by the space available which does not permit the use of suitable mechanical devices. Lifting and lowering of loads manually are two typical activities of manual materials handling that are frequently encountered in most industries. One of the main features of most of the research work on manual lifting and lowering tasks is that it has been of a specific nature undertaken to answer particular limited questions. Much information has been acquired, but it has been acquired in a piecemeal fashion and as a result this area of research is a relatively uncharted area.Item From reel to virtual : the U.S. adult film industry, production, and changes in women's labor opportunity (1957-2005)(2010-05) Tibbals, Chauntelle Anne; Charrad, M. (Mounira)Women work in the adult film industry in a variety of behind-the-scenes occupations and executive roles. Moreover, women can often negotiate the terms of their employment, pay scales have been standardized, and protecting women’s health is conventional practice. As would be expected, women were not always integrated into every level of the adult film industry workplace. This process occurred over time, as it occurred over time in myriad other workplaces; however, unlike many other workplaces, neither advocacy from an external social movement nor activism from workers within the industry itself initiated this integration. With the magnitude of the adult film industry, the apparent integration of women workers, rhetorical assumptions, and scholarly oversights in mind, two core questions are posed in this research. First, have women’s incorporation and opportunities for participation in the United States’ adult film industry changed since the 1950s? Second, has the content of adult films changed since the 1950s? The evidence suggests that women’s labor rights and opportunities have been expanded internally, from the top-down. Company owners, film producers, and powerful industry leaders began expanding women’s rights in response to legal and cultural pressures from regulators and industry-wide structural changes occurring during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In this study, I explore the processes responsible for these developments. The central argument is that the historical development of the adult film industry has been shaped by dynamic multidimensional tensions existing between producers, consumers, and regulators. These tensions are partially reflected in the content of key adult films. The historical development of the adult film industry has led to the emergence of a closely interconnected occupational network. This network and what I call “industry protective practices” –endeavors initiated by adult film industry business leaders, owners, and producers that protect both the welfare of workers and the industry itself— operate synergistically and are responsible for the top-down expansion of women workers’ labor rights and opportunities over time. Industry protective practices, including mandatory and centralized HIV/STI testing and the development of a production code itemizing sex depictions to be avoided, tell us much about strategic rights expansion from the top down.Item Moderating effects of social support on associations of home stress and occupational stress with psychological well-being(Texas Tech University, 1997-12) Bina, Kristan A.Stress models have identified social support as a powerful resource capable of inoculating people against the deleterious effects of life stress (Geller & Hobfoll. 1994). However, to date, research that has examined the effects of social support upon the stress and well-being relationship, has focused primanly on one source of social support within an individual"s network, such as social support from family members (Liao & Stevens, 1994; Vanfossen, 1981), or occupational networks fUnden, 1994). Furthermore, such studies have failed to examine the moderating effects of home and occupational social support upon the nature of the association between stress and psychological well-being, within the same study. Hence, there is a need for investigating within a single study, the moderating effects of different sources of social support (from spouses, supervisors, and co-workers) on the association between stress, originating in both the home and occupational domains, and the psychological well-being of men and women who are married and emploxed. The present study aims to fill these gaps in both the famih stress and occupational stress literature Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine and compare how perceived social support firom network members within the home and occupational domains moderate the effects of both family and occupational stress upon the psychological well-being of married workers. The relationship among these variables is important to investigate because in comparison to women, men receive more and superior social support from both their home and occupational networks. Therefore, it is believed that there ma} be compelling gender differences in employed spouses' life stress and psychological well-being, which in turn, may have vital consequences at the individual, marital, and occupational levels.Item Ontology of work(2003-05) Parkan, Baris; Seibt, Johanna; Solomon, Robert C.Item The work lives and parenting behaviors of mothers of young children(2015-08) Prickett, Kate C.; Crosnoe, Robert; Cavanagh, Shannon; Raley, Kelly; Gershoff, Elizabeth; Benner, AprileBroader structural changes to the U.S. economy, along with short-term fluctuations in the country's economic health, have transformed the nature of work. In response to a more unstable and round-the-clock work environment family life is changing, especially for mothers and their children. Increasingly, social scientists are examining these family implications of employment experiences. This research has highlighted that whether mothers work in the paid labor force or not matters less to their own wellbeing and their children's development than the precariousness of their positions when they do work. This evidence that certain characteristics of work, such as job instability and nonstandard schedules, seem to influence the adjustment and functioning of women for their and their children's wellbeing needs to be extended by efforts to understand how these effects come to be. Parenting, I argue, is an oft hypothesized yet underexplored component by which women's employment affects them and their children. This dissertation, therefore, is comprised of three studies that examine how diverse and unstable experiences that mothers have at work shape how they engage in their parenting roles at home while their children are very young. Drawing from sociological and developmental theoretical frameworks and rich, multi-method longitudinal data sets, I examine: (1) whether both mothers' and fathers' nonstandard work schedules are associated with mothers’ parenting and how shared family dynamics explain these associations; (2) the intersection between mothers' nonstandard work schedules, children's care settings, and maternal sensitivity, and; (3) how entries into new jobs, voluntary exits from jobs, and job loss disrupt mothers' sensitive parenting. The findings from these three aims demonstrate that mothers who have nonstandard work schedules and experience involuntary job loss are less likely to engage in sensitive and cognitively-supportive parenting in the first two years of their children's lives. Because children's care settings are associated with these patterns in protective ways, they represent a policy lever to assist parents in disadvantageous employment situations. Overall, this dissertation uncovers connections between the work and family domains that may play a role in the health and wellbeing of women as well as the transmission of advantage across generations.Item Work values and work motivations of hospitality students as compared to those of home economics students(Texas Tech University, 1985-05) Huang, Bih-shyaFew studies have been concerned with the work values and the work motivations among college students. Values are the determinants of motivations. The work values and the work motivations are individual characteristics. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Pearson Correlation Coefficient were performed in this study. Three out of eight work motivations, achievement behavior, time perspective and partner's choice, were distinctive between the RHIM (Restaurant, Hotel, and Institutional Management) and the HE (Home Economics) students- Five out of fifteen work values, altruism, economic returns, independence, achievement and management, discriminated the RHIM students from the HE students. This indicates that the work values and the work motivations are not only personal characteristics but also occupational characteristics as well. The great similarities between the RHIM and the HE students indicate that RHIM programs are properly housed in the College of Home Economics.Item Work-family policy and working mothers : a comparative study of Germany, Sweden, Italy, and the United States(2016-05) Collins, Caitlyn McKenzie; Williams, Christine L., 1959-; Glass, Jennifer L; Rudrappa, Sharmila; Pettit, Becky; Osborne, CynthiaThroughout the industrialized west, working mothers face common struggles to balance the demands of caring for their children with their pursuit of paid work. However, nations vary widely in their support for these women. This study compares the work-family policies in four countries that exemplify each of the western welfare regimes: Germany, Sweden, Italy, and the United States. Using 135 in-depth interviews, I examine how these policies play out in the daily lives of middle-income working mothers in each country. Drawing on theories of gendered governance, I show how policies intended to help women balance work and family reflect distinctive cultural ideals of motherhood, employment, and gender equality. In countries with policies rooted in strong maternalist traditions, like areas of western Germany and Italy, working mothers experienced stigma for pursuing careers and substantial work-family conflict. In the former East Germany, with its history of mandated full employment, mothers did not face stigma for working, but tended to curtail their career ambitions. Working mothers in Sweden – renowned for its extensive, gender-equal support system – seemed the most contented with their work-family balance. American working mothers received the least policy support and experienced the most guilt and strain in my sample. However, in all cases, working mothers felt that they were held to unrealistic standards at home and/or at work, suggesting that even the most progressive social policies are not enough. Lessening the work-family conflict faced by working mothers will require both cultural changes in the definition of motherhood and fatherhood and the structural reorganization of work and family.Item Working mothers and gender inequality in Germany(2012-05) Collins, Caitlyn McKenzie; Williams, Christine L., 1959-; Glass, JenniferI investigate how women in Germany balance their professional and familial commitments given the generous welfare state support for work-family reconciliation. Drawing on interviews with 21 German mothers in white-collar occupations, I examine the cultural perceptions of working mothers, the impact of “family-friendly” policies, and women’s workplace experiences with their supervisors and colleagues. I argue that working mothers struggle to balance their work and home lives because gender inequality is still widespread in Germany, despite – and in some cases because of – this welfare state support. Women are frequently denigrated and stigmatized for being employed outside the home while raising children, and for their family status at work. Their identities as both mother and worker violate traditional understandings of femininity in Germany. Consequently, the women I interviewed feel like inadequate mothers and incompetent workers as a result of the gendered messages they receive from the state, businesses, and dominant culture. Until the responsibility for raising children and earning a living are shared equally between women and men, and the government and society support them in this endeavor, gender inequality will continue to be a central feature of our social world.