Structure and Measurement of Work-Family Support and Its Moderation Effect

Abstract

Research of work-family relationship has gone through a process of three phases:from work-family conflict to work-family balance and then to work-family facilitation. Most of the researchers considered that work-family conflict could be distinguished as work→family conflict and family→work conflict. Likewise,work-family facilitation could also be distinguished as work→family facilitation and family→work facilitation. Although work-family support was one form of work-family facilitation,it is not clear whether the same scheme is applicable to work-family support. Therefore,the present study proposed that there was a similar situation for work-family support,that is,work-family support could be distinguished as work→family support and family→work support. To verify this proposition,the present study firstly focused on developing a scale of work-family support based on the view of work→family support and family→work support. Then,we used this scale to explore the moderation effect of work-family support in the relationship between work-family conflict and turnover intention. To develop the Work-family Support Scale,we conducted both quantitative survey assessment and in-depth individual interview. EFA and CFA were conducted to examine the factorial structure of the scale. Results showed that Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the entire scale was 0.82. The scale consisted of four factors:organizational support,leadership support,emotion support and instrumental support. The Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the four factors were 0.75,0.78,0.79,and 0.70,respectively. The scale showed adequate psychometric properties in terms of both reliability and validity. Unconstrained model method was used to examine the moderation effect of work-family support between work-family conflict and turnover intention. Results showed that the main effect of work-family support and work-family conflict were -0.34 and 0.35 respectively and the moderation effect was 0.15. As a moderator,work-family support weakened the positive relationship between work-family conflict and turnover intention. The contributions of this study include:(1) enrich the theory of work-family support by dividing work-family support into the support of work→family and the support of family→work; (2) develop the Work-Family Support Scale; and (3) confirm the moderation effect of work-family support between work-family conflict and turnover intention.