Work, Home, and In-Between: A Longitudinal Study of Spillover

Abstract

A longitudinal study of hospital-based health care professionals (N = 151) examined psychological states as a function of demands and resources in the workplace and at home. It found over the study interval (3 months) evidence of spillover relationships from the work to home environment, and to a lesser extent, evidence of spillover from home to work A structural equation model focused on change, by including only relationships that enhanced the prediction of each measure beyond its inherent consistency across the study interval. Further, it considered relationships across the work and home domains in the context of relationships within each domain, so that spillover relationships were always in addition to domain-specific relationships. The analysis found health care workers' sense of professional efficacy to have the most wide-ranging relationships, with links within the work domain, the home domain, and the boundary between these two domains. The results suggest that in contrast with the lagged relationships of accomplishment with other constructs, the relationship of emotional exhaustion with dysfunctional coping responses occurs within an immediate timeframe. The results are discussed in terms of an integrative model of work and family stress. The discussion makes suggestions for further research in this area.