Work Stress and Alcohol Use

Work-Family Conflict
by National Institute of Health

(Page 4 of 5)

As discussed earlier, work-family conflict represents the extent to which demands and responsibilities in one role (work or home) interfere with meeting the demands and responsibilities in the other role (home or work). Because work-family conflict involves difficulties with integrating work and family life, it is a between-role stressor that may cause increased alcohol consumption. In a review of workplace predictors of women's drinking, Shore concluded that conflict between work and other social roles is not predictive of alcohol use. This conclusion was based on the finding that women who had a large number of social roles (employee, spouse, parent, and church member) did not report higher levels of alcohol consumption or problem drinking than did women who had only a few social roles. This research, however, suffers from an important conceptual limitation. The number of social roles a person holds is not a good indicator of the amount of conflict among those roles. Having several social roles is a necessary but not sufficient condition for inter-role conflict. Depending on a variety of circumstances, some people with work and family roles experience no conflict between the roles, whereas other people experience a high degree of conflict between them. Alcohol researchers in this area, therefore, need to measure workfamily conflict directly. Several recent studies have done so and have provided tests of the first three models shown in the figure.

Simple Cause-Effect Model

One study, which used a small sample of 71 workers, failed to find a relation between work-family conflict and the amount of alcohol consumed over the preceding 7 days. In contrast, Bromet and colleagues reported that work-family conflict was positively related to daily alcohol consumption in a sample of bluecollar working women. Frone and colleagues found that work-family conflict was positively related to heavy drinking among men and women in two community samples of employed parents. In a longitudinal followup study, Frone and colleagues reported that work-family conflict assessed in 1989 predicted heavy drinking in 1993 among men and women. Using a representative national sample, Frone reported that workfamily conflict was positively related to a diagnosis of AOD dependence, but not AOD abuse, among men and women. In summary, past research based on the simple cause-effect model provides consistent evidence that workfamily conflict is related to elevated alcohol use among men and women. Nonetheless, this model does not explain why work-family conflict is related to alcohol use or whether certain people are more prone to alcohol use when exposed to work-family conflict. These two issues are addressed in the next sections.

Mediation Model

Two studies tested the process that explains why work-family conflict is related to alcohol use. Both studies tested the general hypothesis that work-family conflict causes negative emotions, which in turn cause increased alcohol use. Vasse and colleagues found that work-family conflict was positively related to overall emotional distress, which in turn was positively related to average weekly alcohol consumption. Frone and colleagues tested the mediating role of both role-related and general negative emotions. They reported that work-family conflict was positively related to both job and family dissatisfaction, which were positively related to general psychological distress (combined symptoms of depression and anxiety) that was in turn positively related to heavy drinking.

Moderation Model Only one study tested the moderation model. Frone and colleagues tested the moderating role of tensionreduction expectancies, which are the belief that alcohol promotes relaxation and alleviates negative emotions. They reported that work-family conflict was positively related to drinking to cope and problem drinking only among people with strong tension-reduction expectancies.

Conclusions

Research on work stress (work stressors and work-family conflict) and alcohol use is growing - the number of studies published on the subject grew from 17 in the 1980s to 39 in the 1990s (at the time this article was written). Several conclusions can be drawn from the recent research on work stress and alcohol use. First, research has expanded to include sources of stress within the work role (work stressors) as well as sources of stress representing the integration of work and family roles (work-family conflict). Second, evidence is growing that work stressors and work-family conflict are related to alcohol use. Finally, despite a continuing overreliance on the simple cause-effect model, a clear trend exists toward the development and testing of more sophisticated models of work stress and alcohol use. Few studies published during the 1980s moved beyond the simple cause-effect model; however, increasingly sophisticated models have provided insight on how work stressors and work-family conflict are related to alcohol use. These models have also offered a richer picture of the people most at risk for engaging in work stressinduced drinking.

About the Author

NIH is the nation's medical research agency - making important medical discoveries that improve health and save lives. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research.