Dimensions of managerial and professional women’s stress : interpersonal conflict and distress

The purpose of this study was to examine Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) stress and coping framework in the context of work-related interpersonal stressors. Drawing on Long, Kahn, and Schutz's (1992) stress and coping model for managerial women, I examined the relative influences of individual differences, cognitive appraisals, coping strategies, and the work environment on the experiences of distress for managerial and professional women who reported interpersonal conflicts as a source of occupational stress. The data were collected prospectively from 157 managerial and professional women (M age 41.2) employed at three-provincial universities. Participants completed three sets of questionnaires administered 2-weeks apart. The first set of questionnaires assessed demographic characteristics and dimensions of participants' personality (gender-role orientation and trait anxiety); the second set assessed stress appraisals, coping strategies (engagement and disengagement), the work environment, and experiences of daily hassles; and the third set assessed psychosomatic distress. Path analysis using LISREL VIII (Jöreskog & Sorbom, 1993) was performed to examine the hypothesized relationships among antecedent, contextual, mediating, and outcome variables central to Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) theoretical framework and Long et al.'s (1992) stress and coping model. Based on the first-order partial correlation matrix, controlling for the effects of negative affective traits, results indicated an overall poor fitting model, X² (41, N=157)=124.89, p <.001, Q=3.0, GFI=.90, AGFI=.75, RMSR=.09, CFI=.70, and D₂=.75. The pattern of variable relationships in the model provides partial support for both the hypothesized model and Lazarus and Folkman's theoretical assumptions. Within the model, work support was positively related to situational control appraisals and negatively associated with threatening work goal attainment appraisals. Unexpectedly, instrumental personality traits had a positive effect on upsetting appraisals of interpersonal work stressors. As hypothesized, situational control appraisals were negatively associated with disengagement coping and positively related to engagement coping within the model. Threatening work goal attainment appraisals had a positive effect on both engagement and disengagement coping. Additionally, upsetting appraisals predicted both disengagement coping and distress, and positive relationships were found between disengagement coping and daily hassles and between daily hassles and distress within the model. The hypothesized mediational role of cognitive appraisals was not supported in this study. Results also yielded nonsignificant relationships between expressive personality traits and both work support and stressor appraisals. Implications of these results and suggestions for future research are discussed.Education, Faculty ofEducational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department ofGraduat