Women's perceptions of quality of household work

Abstract

Women’s roles in the work force have increased, however, women’s positions in the household have not changed greatly (Lennon & Rosenfield, 1994). While paid work research has focused significantly on the qualities of roles, household work research has not (Janzen & Hellsten, 2007). As the few existing instruments that do measure the quality of household work roles lack psychometric evidence (Janzen & Hellsten, 2007), a new instrument assessing all aspects of the quality of household work roles and possessing evidence of validity and reliability is required. The first step in the instrument development process is the identification and definition of relevant constructs. Thus, the main purpose of the study was to identify household work themes. Four focus groups of triple role women were performed with a total of 20 participants. A snowball sampling technique was used to recruit participants. Thematic analysis of the transcripts identified eight themes: No End Result, Scheduling, Time Constraints, Psychological Strain, Equality in Work, Value, Money, and Reward. The results found women to enjoy certain aspects of household work, but that they lead busy and hectic lifestyles. The themes created in the study were placed into a table of specifications this is to guide future instrument development research in which items can be included for each of these eight themes.