Date of Award

January 2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Sociology

First Advisor

Krista Lynn Minnotte

Abstract

Work-related travel has become more prevalent since the early 2000s due to the changing global economy (Jeong et al. 2013), and growth in job-related demands, such as traveling to meet customers, attend meetings, and participate in conferences (Gustafson 2006). Despite the benefits of overnight travel, there are drawbacks associated with traveling for work. Guided by role conflict theory and using secondary data from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce, a subset of data was studied consisting of professional, managerial, and executive working mothers (N = 241) and working fathers (N = 257). This thesis considers how overnight work-related travel is related to mothers and fathers sleep problems, psychological distress, and health, while also taking into consideration control variables including, marital status, education, income, work hours, nonstandard hours, job autonomy, presence of preschool children, dual-earner status, race, and age. The results show that overnight work travel was not significantly related to psychological distress and health among mothers and fathers. Sleep problems was significantly related to mothers and overnight work travel, but not fathers. Implications, limitations, and areas for future research are discussed.

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