Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Influence strategies used during work and family decisions : their connection to decision and marital satisfaction

Public Deposited

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/pr76f606w

Descriptions

Attribute NameValues
Creator
Abstract
  • Changes in work and family roles as more women are entering the work force prompt a re-examination of how couples make work and family decisions. Research confirms that influence is an important component of the decision-making process. Because of the recent changes in women's paid work roles, women may now use more influence strategies than when they were not in the paid work force in such large numbers. From a family decision-making perspective, investigations of the different influence strategies used in making work and family decisions have not occurred in past research. The purpose of this study was to investigate how couples make work and family decisions, examining the impact of gender role traditionality and influence strategies used in decision making. In addition, the association between influence strategies with marital satisfaction was investigated. The sample of this study consisted of 61 couples who had made a work and family decision in the past 6 months. A mail questionnaire was developed assessing the husbands' and wives' use of different influence strategies from Spiro (1983), their gender role traditionality, their satisfaction of the outcome of the decision, and marital satisfaction. The first research question addressed gender role traditionality and influence strategies. Pearson's correlations indicate that traditional wives were more likely to use reward eferent influence than nontraditional wives and that traditional husbands were more likely to use legitimate influence than nontraditional husbands. Also, the connection between gender role traditionality, influence strategies, and decision making satisfaction was investigated. Using hierarchial regression, decision outcome satisfaction accounted for 24 percent of the variance in wives' marital satisfaction. Furthermore, prediction of wives' marital satisfaction was improved 16 percent with the inclusion of influence strategies and gender role ideology to the model. Results for wives found their marital satisfaction to be greater if they used less emotional and legitimate influence but more reward eferent and impression management influences. A similar model was attempted on husband's marital satisfaction with decision making satisfaction, influence strategies, and gender role traditionality. This model accounted for 8 percent of the variance. These findings suggest that a relationship exists between gender role traditionality and the use of different influence strategies for both husbands and wives. For wives, decision making satisfaction, the use of different influence strategies, and gender role ideology all had an effect on their marital satisfaction.
Resource Type
Date Available
Date Issued
Degree Level
Degree Name
Degree Field
Degree Grantor
Commencement Year
Advisor
Academic Affiliation
Non-Academic Affiliation
Subject
Rights Statement
Publisher
Peer Reviewed
Language
Digitization Specifications
  • File scanned at 300 ppi (Monochrome) using ScandAll PRO 1.8.1 on a Fi-6770A in PDF format. CVista PdfCompressor 5.0 was used for pdf compression and textual OCR.
Replaces

Relationships

Parents:

This work has no parents.

In Collection:

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details LeierElaineM1991.pdf 2017-08-09 Public Download