Latent Difference Score Approach to Longitudinal Work-Family Conflict and Mental Health Research On Child Welfare Workers

Purpose: A study conducted by NASW in 2008 among 3,653 social workers found that one third of the social workers had experienced psychological problems (Arrington, 2008). Most studies using cross-sectional design have found that work-family conflict, a significant source of work strain, has deleterious effects on psychological well-being. According to role stress theory (Kahn et al., 1964), roles are the result of the expectations of others about the behavior appropriate of someone in a particular position. When various members of the role set hold different expectations of the focal person, they may impose pressures on the focal person that result in psychological distress. There have been several longitudinal studies conducted on employees in the for-profit sector. However, the causality of the relationship between work-family conflict and psychological well-being has been often overlooked and underexamined among child welfare workers in the human services sector. Using latent difference score (LDS) analysis, the present study aims to investigate the temporal sequence of work-family conflict and psychological well-being among 361 child welfare workers over two years.

Method: Study participants were recruited as a part of a larger longitudinal research study focused on workforce retention. Recruitment took place at a university-affiliated child welfare training center between 2005 and 2007. All study participants were public child welfare agency employees. The mean age of study participants was 36.80. The study sample was largely composed of women (83%). The greatest proportion of study participants self-reported as Caucasian (30.5%), followed by Hispanic/Latino (29.4%), African-American (21.7%), and other (4.1%). Roughly half of the study participants reported not having children (54.9%) and being single (45.3%). Most study participants were direct service line workers (78%). Work-family conflict was measured with a three-item scale, with higher scores indicating a greater degree of work-family conflict. Psychological well-being was measured using GHQ-12, a shortened version of the General Health Questionnaire. A lower score on the GHQ is indicative of psychological distress.

Results: The bivariate LDS model included cross-lagged coupling effects between the true scores of one variable and the latent difference scores of the other variable. The results show that work-family conflict was significantly associated with a subsequent change in psychological well-being (β = -.567, p = .000) over time, whereas psychological well-being had no significant effects on change in work-family conflict. The coupling effect indicates that intraindividual change in psychological well-being is explained by the true score of work-family conflict measured on the preceding assessment.

Conclusions and Implications: The present study found that work-family conflict had negative consequences on subsequent change in child welfare workers’ psychological well-being. That is, when levels of work-family conflict increase, child welfare workers are less likely to have better mental health status. Working in a bureaucratic environment with client-related pressures, child welfare workers have limited control over their work schedules which deter them from fulfilling family responsibilities. Findings of this study suggest the importance of family supportive supervisory behavior in the workplace and increased accommodation by supervisors of the work and family needs of their workers.