Anticipated work-family conflict in Brazilian university students

Abstract

Career development and work-family conflict are two areas of research with extreme theoretical and practical relevance, especially when focusing on job and non-job related life dimensions. With the intent to contribute to this debate, especially to career counseling practices with young adults, the present study investigated how the perception of interactions between roles and demands that arise from these two dimensions – family and work – influence university students’ perceptions of career success. The study was structured in two parts: 1) adaptation of a measure that evaluates work-family conflict anticipation in university students in the Brazilian context; and 2) proposal of a model to evaluate the anticipation of the work-family conflict construct and its relation with the variables success perception, career adaptability and attachment styles. Participants were 424 students enrolled in different majors of public and private institutions from a state in Southeast Brazil, who answered a survey. The results point to a psychological measure with favorable indicators of validity and precision for the evaluation of the work-family conflict anticipation dimensions. Additionally, the proposed model shows that career adaptability dimensions are positive predictors of career success, while insecure attachment dimensions are negative predictors.