Resilience as a Moderator of Work-School Conflict on Daytime Sleepiness, Satisfaction, and General Well-Being

Working through college is now the rule rather the exception. Recent reports indicate that almost 80% of college undergraduates work while enrolled (King, 2006), citing reasons such as tuition, fees, and living expenses.Prior studies have documented the negative effects of work-school conflict, which is most likely to occur when students work in excess of 20 hours per week (McNall & Michel, 2011; Miller, 2008; Gilbert, 2010). These effects include compromised health and well-being, a lower GPA, decreased sleep, and decreased satisfaction with work. Insufficient research has explored factors which may help reduce these harmful effects. In this study, 180 working college students participated in an online survey to help test the primary hypotheses that resilience would buffer the deleterious effects of work-school conflict on sleep, school and job satisfaction, and general well-being. Resilience is defined as “tendencies to cope with stress in a highly adaptive manner,” by Wallston and Sinclair (2004) and has been shown to have a protective influence on those dealing with stress. This study examined the direct effect of WSC on four dependent variables including daytime sleepiness, job satisfaction, school satisfaction, and general well-being. This study also investigated whether or not resilience would have a mitigating effect on the level of WSC experienced by students on each outcome variable