Career-Family Attitudes scale

Description

This measure (Career-Family Attitudes) was developed by Sanders, Lengnick-Hall, Lengnick-Hall, and Steele-Clapp (1998). It uses 50 items to assess employee attitudes toward managing their career and family interface. The measure was designed to be gender neutral and to assess not only what respondents expect for themselves but also what they expect from their spouse in the area of career-family conflict. The measure includes subscales that assess family­ career interface from the standpoint of the extent to which the respondent defers career matters to take care of family matters as well as the extent to which a spouse defers his or her career. The measure covers possible con­flicts in the areas of career, household, and child care responsibilities (family focus); the extent of equal balance in sharing home and career chores (bal­ance); the extent to which a respondent may pay more attention to career than to marriage or children (career focus); the extent to which the respon­dent has decision power in the household and the spouse defers his or her career to raise children (dominance); the extent to which a spouse will sup­ port the respondent’s career by giving in on issues, moving, and so on (spousal support); and the extent to which spouses socialize or vacation in­ dependent of the other.

Reliability

Coefficient alpha values for the subscales were .78 for family focus, .78 for balance, .84 for career focus, .75 for dominance, .67 for spousal support, and for independence (Sanders et al, 1998).

Validity

Family focus correlated negatively with educational aspirations and an employee’s grade point average. Balance correlated negatively with male gender of respondent and positively with educational aspirations and a respondent’s grade point average. Career focus correlated positively with educational aspirations and an employee’s grade point average. Dominance correlated positively with being a male respondent and living in a rural set­ ting. Spousal support correlated positively with being male and correlated negatively with educational aspirations and grade point average. Indepen­ dence correlated negatively with being a male respondent and positively with educational aspirations and grade point average (Sanders et al., 1998). Factor analysis of the scale items found six factors corresponding to family focus, balance career focus, dominance, spousal support, and independence. The family focus factor was subsequently separated into “I defer” and “someone defers” subscales (Sanders et al., 1998).

Source

Items

Responses are obtained using a 7-point Likert-type scale where 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree.

Family focus items (“I defer” subscale):

1. I expect to go as far as I can in my career and expect encouragement from my spouse (R)
2. I would like for my spouse to make most of the financial decisions regardless of who makes the most money
3. I do not expect to have a career
4. I would like for my spouse to have more education than I do
5. It would bother me a lot if I make more money than my spouse does
6. If my spouse and I can’t agree on something, I think I should most often give in to my spouse
7. I will be mostly responsible for raising our children, regardless of whether or not I work outside the home
8. If I do not work outside the home, I will do all the housework
9. I expect to stay home full-time with our children
10. My spouse’s career is more important than mine

Family focus items (“Someone defers” subscale):

1. Professional child care providers (day care, sitter) will take care of our children while my spouse and I work (R)
2. I expect that either my spouse or I will be home during the day with our children
3. Marriage and two careers do not mix
4. Children and two careers do not mix

Balance items:

1. I expect my spouse to be mostly responsible for raising our children, regardless of whether or not my spouse is employed (R)
2. If my spouse works outside the home, I will help somewhat with the housework
3. My career and my spouse’s career will be equally important
4. I expect my spouse and I to share responsibility for raising our children
5. I don’t care whether my spouse or I make the most money
6. If I am employed, I expect my spouse to help with the housework
7. I intend to encourage my spouse to fully develop his or her career
8. I would like my spouse and me to make financial decisions together regardless of how much money we each make
9. If both my spouse and I are employed, I expect housework to be a jointly shared responsibility
10. I would like to take some vacations with my spouse but no children

Career focus items:

1. I expect that there will be times when my spouse will have to pay more attention to job problems than to our relationship
2. Sometimes I will have to pay more attention to my job than to my family
3. I do not expect to ever have to pay more attention to my job than to my relationship with my spouse (R)
4. I expect that sometimes my spouse will have to pay more attention to his or her job than to our family
5. I expect there will be times when I will have to pay more attention to my job than to my relationship with my spouse
6. I expect that neither my spouse nor I will pay more attention to our careers than to our family (R)

Dominance items:

1. I expect my spouse to stay home full-time with our children
2. My spouse should be able to go to school as long as he or she wishes whether or not we have children (R)
3. It would bother me a lot if my spouse makes more money than I do
4. Yard work and fix-it tasks will mainly be done by me
5. My career will be more important than my spouse’s career
6. I would like my spouse and I to share yard work and fix-it tasks (R)
7. I do not expect my spouse to have a career
8. I would like to make most of the financial decisions regardless of how much money my spouse makes
9. I would like to have more education than my spouse

Spousal support items:

1. If my spouse and I can’t agree on something, I think my spouse should give in to me
2. If my spouse is not employed, he or she should do all the housework
3. If I get an excellent job offer elsewhere, I will expect my spouse to move to the new place
4. Weekends will be time for me to relax, watch TV, , and I expect my spouse to keep distractions (i.e., visitors, children, chores) to a minimum
5. Weekends will be time for my spouse to relax, watch TV, , and I expect to keep distractions (i.e., visitors, children, chores) to a minimum
6. Yard work and fix-it tasks will mainly be done by my spouse
7. Both on the job and at home, some tasks are “men’s work” and some tasks are “women’s work”

Independence items:

1. I expect my spouse to take some vacations alone
2. I would like to occasionally go out in the evening without my spouse
3. I would like to take some vacations by myself
4. I expect my spouse to occasionally go out in the evening without me Items denoted with (R) are reverse