Moderating effects of social support on associations of home stress and occupational stress with psychological well-being

Stress models have identified social support as a powerful resource capable of inoculating people against the deleterious effects of life stress (Geller & Hobfoll. 1994). However, to date, research that has examined the effects of social support upon the stress and well-being relationship, has focused primanly on one source of social support within an individual"s network, such as social support from family members (Liao & Stevens, 1994; Vanfossen, 1981), or occupational networks fUnden, 1994).

Furthermore, such studies have failed to examine the moderating effects of home and occupational social support upon the nature of the association between stress and psychological well-being, within the same study. Hence, there is a need for investigating within a single study, the moderating effects of different sources of social support (from spouses, supervisors, and co-workers) on the association between stress, originating in both the home and occupational domains, and the psychological well-being of men and women who are married and emploxed. The present study aims to fill these gaps in both the famih stress and occupational stress literature Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine and compare how perceived social support firom network members within the home and occupational domains moderate the effects of both family and occupational stress upon the psychological well-being of married workers.

The relationship among these variables is important to investigate because in comparison to women, men receive more and superior social support from both their home and occupational networks. Therefore, it is believed that there ma} be compelling gender differences in employed spouses' life stress and psychological well-being, which in turn, may have vital consequences at the individual, marital, and occupational levels.