Job Crafting and Off-job Crafting : Well-Being and Satisfaction of Psychological Needs of the DRAMMA-model

The aim of this thesis was to find out whether the negative effect of job and home demands on subjective well-being (SWB) can be buffered by job and off-job crafting. SWB was examined through subjective vitality, mental fatigue, presence of meaning and meaningful work. In addition, this thesis aimed at clarifying how job and home demands are related to job and off-job crafting within and across life domains. Lastly, the connection between job crafting and off-job crafting was studied exploratively. Theoretically, this thesis was based on the DRAMMA-model of psychological needs. Job and home demands were expected to increase crafting for the satisfaction of detachment and relaxation, and to decrease crafting for the satisfaction of autonomy, mastery, meaning, and affiliation. The data was collected via a survey for the research project Making Leisure Work: Leisure Crafting as Active Recovery from Stressful Work. Altogether, 541 Finnish employees from various fields responded to the survey. The majority (85.2%) of the participants were female and their mean age was 49 years. Almost half (47.5%) of the participants reported high school or vocational school as their highest level of education. Job crafting and off-job crafting were measured with new DRAMMA-based scales. Job demands were measured with the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire and home demands with the Home Demands Scale. Subjective vitality was measured with the Subjective Vitality Scale, mental fatigue was measured with the Three-Dimensional Work Fatigue Inventory, presence of meaning was measured with the Meaning in Life Questionnaire and meaningful work with the Work as Meaning Inventory. Relationships between these variables were examined through their correlations, regression analyses and the Process v3.0 method by Andrew F. Hayes. The results of this thesis support the idea that an individual is able to prevent the negative effect which high job and home demands have on subjective vitality and mental fatigue by crafting in order to improve the satisfaction of the psychological needs of the DRAMMA-model during job and off-job time. This buffering effect was not found for meaning as an outcome. In addition, the results broaden the understanding of the relationship between job and home demands and crafting. According to the results, high demands are often negatively associated with crafting. Home demands were found to have more relations with job crafting, than job demands with off-job crafting. The results also suggest, that people who craft for a need in the other life domain, usually craft for the same need also in another life domain. This thesis contributes insights into the DRAMMA-model, crafting based on it, and the relationship between job and off-job time. It is one of the few studies to examine the same phenomenon in two life domains in one study. In future research, a longitudinal study is needed in order to examine the causal relationships between these variables. In addition, other possible predictors and outcomes of crafting should be taken into account. The results encourage to study DRAMMA-based off-job crafting among the non-working population. Based on this thesis, interventions, which acknowledge the important role of home demands as the factor which prevents employees from job crafting and improving their well- being, could be developed