General Job Satisfaction From a Developmental Perspective: Exploring Choice—Job Matches at Two Career Stages

The authors explored predictions of general job satisfaction at early and middle adulthood and uncovered several findings about developmental processes associated with job satisfaction. Tests of life‐span career theory propositions revealed that neither choice‐job congruence nor gender added significantly to predictions of job satisfaction at 2 career stages. Earlier occupational choice and current job added to predictions of midcareer (modal age 43 years) job satisfaction, especially for men. The predictability of job satisfaction is apparently influenced by the career stage when satisfaction is appraised.     

Volunteer Engagement: Exploring the Distinction Between Job and Organizational Engagement

Retaining engaged volunteers is crucial to many non-profit organizations. However, research on volunteer engagement is limited, and the distinction between job and organizational engagement in volunteers remains to be investigated. In this paper, we examine both organizational- and job-level engagement, and specifically, whether perceived organizational support would enhance volunteer engagement and associated attitudes. We surveyed 221 volunteers, and asked them about their perceptions of organizational support; their engagement with their volunteer job and the organization they volunteer for; satisfaction; commitment; and turnover intentions. Both organizational and job engagements had significant relationships with the attitudinal variables. However, we found that organizational rather than job engagement mediated the relationship between organizational support and volunteer satisfaction and commitment. While organizational engagement correlated with turnover intentions, neither job nor organizational engagement mediated the relationship between support and the intent to leave. Our findings advance the research on volunteer engagement, and highlight the importance of organizational engagement for this important, but too often overlooked, workforce.     

Work‐Related Health Limitations,Education, and the Risk of Marital Disruption

Despite progress in identifying the covariates of divorce, there remain substantial gaps in the knowledge. One of these gaps is the relationship between health and risk of marital dissolution. I extend prior research by examining the linkages between work‐related health limitations and divorce using 25 years of data (N = 7919) taken from the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY‐79). I found that work‐related health limitations among husbands, but not wives, were linked to an increased risk of divorce. In addition, I found that this relationship was moderated by education in a fashion that varies according to race. For White men, education exacerbated the effect of health limitations, but for Black men, education attenuated the effects of work‐related health limitations.     

‘Making Pies’—A Way of Exploring Pupils’ Views on Curriculum Innovation

This article examines the use of focus groups (FGs) as a way of gathering pupils’ views on the implementation of new curricula. We provide illustrations of creative activities, which were especially designed for a case‐study research project exploring the views of 11‐year‐old pupils in English schools adopting an innovative approach to the Year 7 curriculum. We argue that combining FGs with creative methods encourages pupils to take an active role in interviews, enriches the quality of the data being collected and enhances the place of FGs as important tools in eliciting pupils’ voices for both research and curriculum planning purposes.     

Now — and Now — and Now: Time,Space and the Material Entanglements of the Classroom

This study examines time and children in the classroom based on free‐flowing observations written in class by 10‐year‐old pupils. The concept of entanglement is activated to consider time together with space and matter and explore the dynamics in which these elements interact. The analysis unsettles the notion of time as a separate, ‘outside’ parameter: rather than examining children in time, this viewpoint enables us to see children as being or becoming of different times and entangling with material elements. On the other hand, entanglements also produce different moments of now, which are seen as multiple and hybrid. The author suggests an understanding of research with children as ‘lively entanglements’ in which special attention should be given to things that matter to children.     

Dimensions of Job Quality,Mechanisms, and Subjective Well‐Being in the United States

How does job quality predict subjective well‐being in the United States? Prior research suggests that various job quality dimensions such as job security and individual task discretion affect subjective well‐being, but the theoretical mechanisms are implied rather than tested and aspects of job quality are rarely tested together. I use structural equation modeling and General Social Survey data to assess the impact of five job quality dimensions—individual task discretion, monetary compensation, job security, low work intensity, and safe work conditions—on subjective well‐being. Then, I show that job quality influences subjective well‐being by improving social life, altering class identification, affecting physical health, and increasing amounts of leisure time. Finally, while I find that job quality dimensions do have statistically significant effects on subjective well‐being, the way in which job quality affects subjective well‐being differs by job dimension. In other words, job quality has a statistically significant impact on subjective well‐being, but different job quality domains are connected to subjective well‐being in different ways.     

Technology and Job Separation Among Young Adults, 1980–98

This analysis uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth during the period 1980–98 to examine the relationship between the likelihood that a worker remains at the same job for two years and several measures of technology usage at the industry level. The relationship between job separation and technology usage is generally negative. Quits (not involuntary job loss) generally account for the negative relationship between job separation and technology. Some results suggest that less educated workers are more likely than college graduates to lose jobs in technology-intensive industries.     

Research,ideology and practice—a discontinuity

SUMMARY. This paper is concerned essentially with the influence of professional ideology on practice in the field of public child care. In recent years I have become increasingly aware of a discontinuity in the developing theoretical basis for such practice arising from research, and the actual outcomes of such practice as demonstrated by the same research. Whilst acknowledging that there will be an inevitable time lag in implementing some of those research findings, I am concerned that those of us involved in the public care of children, and particularly in the training of the carers, have not yet adjusted our ideological base to take account of the evidence and of certain important principles. By identifying the changing nature of research and examining some of the findings as they relate to factors such as the social context of child care, and the nature of agency policy and practice, I attempt to demonstrate the centrality of concepts such as partnership, consumerism and power sharing. However, I conclude that professional ideologies appear to experience great difficulty in encompassing such concepts     

An Event—Emotion or Event—Expression Hypothesis? A Comment on the Commentaries on Bennett,Bendersky, and Lewis (2002)

The hypothesis investigated by Bennett, Bendersky, and Lewis (2002) has 2 components. The first concerns relations between events and emotions, and the second concerns relations between emotions and facial expressions. These components should be conceptually distinguished, independently investigated, and separately evaluated.     

The Within‐Job Motherhood Wage Penalty in Norway, 1979–1996

The motherhood wage penalty is a substantial obstacle to progress in gender equality at work. Using matched employer–employee data from Norway (1979–1996, N = 236,857 individuals, N = 1,027,462 individual‐years), a country with public policies that promote combining family and career, we investigate (a) whether the penalty arises from differential pay by employers or from the sorting of employees on occupations and establishments and (b) changes in the penalties during a period with major changes in family policies. We find that (a) the penalty to motherhood was mostly due to sorting on occupations and occupation‐establishment units (mothers and nonmothers working in the same occupation and establishment received similar pay), and (b) the wage penalties to motherhood declined substantially over the 18‐year period.     

Kenneth B. Hoyt—Visionary,Statesperson, Leader,Activist

Kenneth B. Hoyt passed away on August 27, 2008. He leaves a comprehensive legacy of insights and initiatives about the relationship of education and work, the importance of career development as a mission of schools, and the role of school counselors in these important processes. This article reviews Dr. Hoyt's 50‐year‐long body of work.     

More Control,Less Conflict? Job Demand–Control,Gender and Work–Family Conflict

The connection between working hours and work‐to‐family conflict has been established in a number of studies. However, it seems what is important is not only the quantity of work but also its quality, as captured by the job demand–control model. Survey data from 800 Swedish employees show that job demands spill over negatively into family life, while job control reduces work‐to‐family conflict. Interestingly, women in jobs with high demands and high control — regarded as the prototype for modern, flexible work life — do not experience more work‐to‐family conflict than men, even when working the same hours.     

Family Therapy,Group Work and Psychiatry—Working Under the Influence

When people are admitted to a psychiatric hospital they are degraded in status by the admission process — a ceremony supported by structures built into the hospital/treatment system. This paper explores some aspects of this process and proposes systemic group work as one way of redressing the balance for process. Regrading of status begins when patients discover the important contribution they have made to their own recovery. The development and application of systemic group work is traced, and Jantsch's concept of co-evolution is invoked as one useful way of understanding the process. Co-evolutionary ideas are also important in understanding the processes which occur in the context of the hospital ward and the wider systems into which influence extends.