Work-family conflict and sleep disturbance: the Malaysian working women study

• Published in: Industrial Health Vol. 54; no. 1; pp. 50 - 57
• Main Authors: AAZAMI, Sanaz, MOZAFARI, Mosayeb, SHAMSUDDIN, Khadijah, AKMAL, Syaqirah
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Japan National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health 01.01.2016; National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Japan
• Subjects: Adult; Age Factors; Analysis; Conflict (Psychology); Cross-Sectional Studies; Family; Female; Health aspects; Humans; Life-cycle perspective; Malaysia; Middle Aged; Original; Sleep; Sleep disorders; Sleep Disorders, Intrinsic - etiology; Sleep disturbance; Social aspects; Stress, Psychological - psychology; Surveys and Questionnaires; Time Factors; Work and family; Work-family conflict; Work-Life Balance; Working women; Malaysia; ISEW, Malaysia
• ISSN: 0019-8366; 1880-8026
• DOI: 10.2486/indhealth.2015-0086

This study aimed at assessing effect of the four dimensions of work-family conflicts (strain and time-based work interference into family and family interference into work) on sleep disturbance in Malaysian working women. This cross-sectional study was conducted among 325 Malaysian married working women. Multiple-stage simple random sampling method was used to recruit women from public service departments of Malaysia. Self-administrated questionnaires were used to measure the study variables and data were analyzed using SPSS version 21. We found that high level of the four dimensions of work-family conflicts significantly increase sleep disturbance. Our analyses also revealed an age-dependent effect of the work-family conflict on sleep disturbance. Women in their 20 to 30 yr old suffer from sleep disturbance due to high level of time-based and strain-based work-interference into family. However, the quality of sleep among women aged 30–39 were affected by strain-based family-interference into work. Finally, women older than 40 yr had significantly disturbed sleep due to strain-based work-interference into family as well as time-based family interference into work. Our findings showed that sleep quality of working women might be disturbed by experiencing high level of work-family conflict. However, the effects of inter-role conflicts on sleep varied among different age groups.