Work-Family Conflict and Alcohol Use: Examination of a moderated mediation model

Abstract

Research consistently documents the negative effects of work-family conflict; however, little research focuses on alcohol use. This study embraces a tension reduction theory of drinking, wherein alcohol use is thought to reduce the negative effects of stress. The purpose of the study was to test a moderated mediation model of the relationship between work-family conflict and alcohol use in a Chicagoland community sample of 998 caregivers. Structural equation models showed that distress mediated the relationship between work-family conflict and alcohol use. Furthermore, tension reduction expectancies of alcohol exacerbated the relationship between distress and alcohol use. The results advance the study of work-family conflict and alcohol use, helping explain this complicated relationship using sophisticated statistical techniques. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Work-family conflict
• alcohol
• psychological distress
• tension reduction expectancy
• structural equation modeling

Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by grant number AA015766 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NIAAA. The data were collected by the Survey Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Notes

1. In the current study, the Sobel test (often used to test the significance of an indirect effect) was also significant (2.60, SE = .07, P = .009). However, this test may not be reliable because it requires normality of the sample distribution of the indirect effect.⁸²