Reducing the Strain Perceptions of Public Child Welfare Case Managers: Testing Workload Demands Curvilinear Association and Job Control's Moderating Affect

Background and Purpose:  High workload demands have been consistently identified as prevalent and problematic in public sector child welfare agencies.  Understandably, child welfare researchers have focused considerable scientific study on individual- and organizational-level factors that ameliorate the construct’s strain-inducing effects.  Far less empirical work has investigated characteristics of the job that reduce strain perceptions when workload demands are perceived as challenging.  The job demands-control (JD-C) model posits a linear and interactive relationship between job demands and job control on job strain.  Inconsistent research findings have led some organizational scholars to assert that job demands, such as workload, may possess a curvilinear association with job strain.

Conservation of resource theory states that strain perceptions decrease when scarce personal resources are effectively managed.  Since job control permits ample mental and physical rest/recovery via the delegation and rescheduling of (in)formal job duties and responsibilities, control over one’s job should substantially influence workload demands’ curvilinear association with job strain.  To date, no known published empirical studies have uncovered a moderating affect for job control on the curvilinear relationship between workload demands and job strain.  This study addressed this gap in the child welfare and JD-C model literatures by testing the following hypotheses:

           1) A significant positive curvilinear main effect for workload demands on job strain;

           2) A nonsignificant linear workload demands-control interaction on job strain;              

           3) A significant negative curvilinear workload demands-linear control interaction on job

               strain. 

Methods:  Four hundred and nineteen child welfare case managers situated in 10 New York State counties were surveyed (83 % response rate).  Reliabilities and factor loadings for all study measures achieved recommended levels.  Construct and discriminant validity was established using the structural equation modeling software AMOS 18.0.  Except for one extreme outliner, no violations of OLS regression were noted and common method variance did not significantly inflate the study’s correlations of interest.  Finally, study hypotheses were examined in SPSS 18.0 and procedures outlined by Aiken and West were used to test the two interaction terms. 

Results:  All hypotheses were supported.  A significant positive curvilinear main effect for workload demands (β = 0.11, p < 0.05) and a significant negative curvilinear demands-linear control interaction (β = -0.22, p < 0.05) on job strain were observed.  Further, the linear demands-control interaction (β = 0.01, n.s.) on job strain was nonsignificant.  The predictor variables jointly explained 26% of the variance in the criterion measure.

Conclusion and Implications:  Study data offer two original contributions.  Data are the first to uncover a significant positive curvilinear workload demands-job strain association in a child welfare sample.  More importantly, by demonstrating a significant negative curvilinear workload demands-linear control interaction, study data may improve the JD-C model’s predictive validity.  Findings inform public sector child welfare practice in two ways.  First, job control’s strain-buffering effects appear most pronounced at higher- and lower-levels of workload demands.  Second, when job control is nominal, case manager strain perceptions are lowest when workload demands are moderate.  Future research should replicate these unique findings in other fields of social work practice.