Spousal support for physicians: do occupational similarity, gender or parental status matter?
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2011
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Abstract
This dissertation uses a mixed methods research design in order to examine how the occupation of one's spouse, gender and parental status may explain differences in the types and amounts of spousal support individuals receive when coping with work-related stress. In doing so, interview data were analyzed from physicians and their spouse along with survey data from married physicians, some of whom are married to other physicians, some have a spouse working in a health-related field, some have a spouse working outside of medicine, and others who have a spouse who is not employed. The results of both the qualitative and quantitative analyses suggest that physicians with the greatest degree of shared occupational and experiential similarity with their spouse (i.e., married to physicians) received the most support from their spouse. This is consistent with the theory of homophily in demonstrating the importance of shared experiences in understanding the effectiveness of social support. The results of both sets of data also show that male physicians tend to receive more emotional support from their spouse than female physicians. These findings suggest that wives provide more understanding and empathy to their spouses than husbands, consistent with the support gap hypothesis in the literature on gender differences in social support. Finally, both the interviews and survey results suggest that physicians who are parents receive less emotional and informational support than physicians who are not parents, particularly since parents are often busier with childcare responsibilities. However, contrary to what was expected, the results of the quantitative analysis suggest that parents of school-aged children received significantly less social support than those with preschool-aged children. The interviews also suggested that once physicians have children, wives tend to provide more instrumental support than husbands since physicians' wives are more likely to be responsible for childcare and housework. This dissertation closes with a discussion of the qualitative and quantitative finding, the conclusions of this study and implications for future research.
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Bibliography: p. 188-199.
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Citation
Jovanovic, A. J. (2011). Spousal support for physicians: do occupational similarity, gender or parental status matter? (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/4231