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Article

Reliability and Validation of U.S. Army-Oriented Brief Work-to-Family and Family-to-Work Conflict Scales: An Email Sample of 262 Army Career Officers

by
Walter R. Schumm
1,*,
Glen Bloomstrom
2,†,
Vance P. Theodore
3,† and
Roudi Nazarinia Roy
4
1
Department of Applied Human Sciences, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506-1403, USA
2
U.S. Army, Formerly Bethlehem Theological Seminary, Minneapolis, MN 55415, USA
3
Department of Religion, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA
4
Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Retired U. S. Army Chaplain. The first three authors retired at the rank of colonel (O-6), U.S. Army.
Soc. Sci. 2025, 14(10), 599; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci14100599
Submission received: 28 June 2025 / Revised: 15 September 2025 / Accepted: 16 September 2025 / Published: 10 October 2025
(This article belongs to the Section Family Studies)

Abstract

Work–family conflicts (WFCs) and family–work conflicts (FWCs) have been found to be important to worker morale and retention as well as family (as defined by the respondents) well-being, with particular importance within the military, as indicated by a number of studies in the United States, Canada, and European countries. However, few studies have focused on the impact of WFC and FWC for high ranking officers and their families. This study involved two samples of officers attending an advanced leadership course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 2007, featuring a total of 262 Army officers and another 45 officers from other services and countries. The sample of Army officers included 239 men (85.4% of whom were a parent) and 22 women (63.6% of whom were a parent; Fisher’s Exact Test, p < 0.02), with one missing case for sex. Of the men and women, respectively, most were married for the first time (190/11), with some never married (14/5), married but divorced (10/1), married/divorced/remarried (20/4), married/spouse died/remarried (1/0), married/divorced/remarried/divorced/remarried (4/0), and married/divorced/remarried/divorced/remarried (0/1). Measures for cohabitation or same-sex partnerships were not used. Two modified measures of WFC and FWC of four items each were tested and found to represent different factors and to have high internal consistency reliability. In general we found few sex differences, but female officers seemed to be more influenced by family–work conflict than male officers. One of our most substantial findings was that work–family conflict was more prevalent than family–work conflict within our sample. Also, we found that marital satisfaction tended to be higher than parental satisfaction and that officers usually found their own retention intentions to be higher than their perception of that of their spouses. Satisfaction with the military was consistently and strongly related to lower levels of work–family conflict while similar but weaker trends were found for family–work conflict. Most of our results were found to cross-validate with a subsample of non-Army officers in our sample. We found bias from marital social desirability to be lower for our marital process scale and for FWC than for marital satisfaction and WFC. In sum, our results confirm adverse effects of deployments and other stressors on military families and a continuing need for military support for families, even among higher ranking officer families.
Keywords: Family-work conflict; Work-family conflict; military families; Fort Leavenworth; Marital satisfaction; parental satisfaction; military chaplains Family-work conflict; Work-family conflict; military families; Fort Leavenworth; Marital satisfaction; parental satisfaction; military chaplains

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Schumm, W.R.; Bloomstrom, G.; Theodore, V.P.; Roy, R.N. Reliability and Validation of U.S. Army-Oriented Brief Work-to-Family and Family-to-Work Conflict Scales: An Email Sample of 262 Army Career Officers. Soc. Sci. 2025, 14, 599. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci14100599

AMA Style

Schumm WR, Bloomstrom G, Theodore VP, Roy RN. Reliability and Validation of U.S. Army-Oriented Brief Work-to-Family and Family-to-Work Conflict Scales: An Email Sample of 262 Army Career Officers. Social Sciences. 2025; 14(10):599. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci14100599

Chicago/Turabian Style

Schumm, Walter R., Glen Bloomstrom, Vance P. Theodore, and Roudi Nazarinia Roy. 2025. "Reliability and Validation of U.S. Army-Oriented Brief Work-to-Family and Family-to-Work Conflict Scales: An Email Sample of 262 Army Career Officers" Social Sciences 14, no. 10: 599. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci14100599

APA Style

Schumm, W. R., Bloomstrom, G., Theodore, V. P., & Roy, R. N. (2025). Reliability and Validation of U.S. Army-Oriented Brief Work-to-Family and Family-to-Work Conflict Scales: An Email Sample of 262 Army Career Officers. Social Sciences, 14(10), 599. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci14100599

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