2012 PROCEEDINGS - Public Relations Society of America

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with work-life stresses, compared to those whose highest education was a master‘s degree (M = 4.41, SD = 1.42) (mean difference = .409, SE = .137, p < .05). No significant main effects of accreditation or marital status were detected. Organizational Support on Coping Preferences RQ4.1 asked how immediate supervisor support is associated with PR practitioners‘ work-life conflict coping preferences. Hierarchical regression, after partialing out the effects of gender, age, years of public relations experience, and average daily work hours, indicated that immediate supervisor support served as a significant predictor for one type of work-life conflict coping: positive thinking (beta = .11, t = 2.40, p < .05) (F = 2.43, p < .05, adjusted R square = .02). More support from the immediate supervisor was associated with more positive thinking coping among employees. RQ4.2 asked how organizational work-life culture is associated with practitioners‘ worklife conflict coping preferences. Hierarchical regression, after partialing out the effects of gender, age, years of public relations experience, and average daily work hours, indicated that an organizational culture promoting work as the sole priority was found to be negatively associated with employees‘ positive thinking (beta = -.19, t = -3.29, p < .01) (F = 3.42, p < .001, adjusted R square = .03) in dealing with work-life conflict, the increase of which was likely to reduce the positive thinking coping. No significant associations were found for the culture that advocated for work-life separation. Joint Effects of Conflict Stressors and Organizational Factors RQ5 asked how different stressors of work-life conflicts and organizational support together predict practitioners‘ coping preferences, after partialing out demographics and job characteristics. Hierarchical regression, after partialing out the effects of gender, age, years of public relations experience, and average daily work hours, indicated that work-life conflict stressors and organizational factors co-contributed significantly to all coping strategies except emotional expression. Behavior-driven work-life stressors demonstrated the same pattern of being associated with rational action and positive thinking. Work-driven stressors was a predictor of using avoidance as a type of coping, while nonwork-driven stressors predicted denial and avoidance coping preferences (see Table 2). Interestingly, an organizational culture strongly advocating for work-life separation was found to be a significant predictor for employees‘ needs for instrumental support (beta = .13, t = 1.89, p < .06). The more organizational demands existed for separating life from work, the more instructions seemed to be necessary for employees to better cope with work-life conflict. Discussion and Implications Practitioners reported strong preferences in using more proactive conflict coping strategies, such as rational action and positive thinking. Women and those with a graduate degree tend to report more coping behaviors than did others. Three types of stressors are identified as sources of work-life conflicts: behavior-driven, work-driven, and life-driven, the categorization of which is based on the perspective of a work versus life dichotomy and behavior (in)consistency across work and life. While behavior-driven work-life stressors are associated with proactive coping such as rational action and positive thinking, work-driven stressors tended to trigger more avoidance. Non-work driven stressors seem to predict more passive coping tendencies such as denial and avoidance. 96
Organizational factors are important in understanding how practitioners cope with worklife conflict. The more organizational demands existed for separating life from work, the more instructions seemed to be necessary for employees to better cope with work-life conflict. Positive thinking, as a type of cognitive coping, tended to increase when there was more immediate supervisor support and to decrease when an organization‘s work-life culture was skewed toward promoting work as the sole priority. Organizational Support is Essential to Proactive Coping According to the survey results, there are six distinct types of coping strategies that are used by practitioners in work-life conflict situations. These coping strategies are largely aligned with Duhachek‘s (2005) multidimensional coping model. Noticeably, along with positive thinking, denial, instrumental support, and avoidance, emotional support and emotional venting provide better data fit when combined into one factor, emotional coping, while rational thinking and action explain the results better when grouped under one factor, rational action. Female practitioners tend to use more, i.e., a greater variety of, coping strategies across the board, compared to male practitioners. Among all coping strategies, proactive ones such as rational action and positive thinking are the most used coping strategies among the practitioners surveyed in this study. Organizational factors, together with conflict stressors, play a core role in facilitating or preventing practitioners from proactive work-life conflict coping: Rational action. According to Jin (2010), this type of coping is most objective and proactive, often evidenced by the following: analyzing what is going on with one‘s work and life; stepping back from the stressful conflict and being objective; controlling emotions in order to avoid acting rashly; concentrating on pondering how a given problem can be resolved and making a plan of action, which involves generating and assessing different potential solutions. According to our findings, practitioners tend to implement rational action coping strategies when the work-life conflict is predominately caused by work-related pressures and exhaustion. If the stress is caused by non-work or family pressures, or by the frustration of not being able to apply what works at work to non-work matters, practitioners tend not to use as much rational thinking or action-taking to handle the situation. In short, practitioners cope with work stressors more rationally, compared to how they cope with nonwork stressors. Positive thinking. The primary constraining factor for practitioners to resort to positive thinking is behavior-driven work-life stressors, meaning practitioners try and yet are often frustrated by the fact that problem-solving behaviors at work do not translate well to non-work problems. When practitioners are stressed by behaviors or problem-solving plans not applying to both work and life, they tend to stay away from positive thinking. It is important for practitioners, when feeling behavior-driven stressors, to be more mindful of their thought processes of looking at the bright side of things or focusing on the positive aspects in both work and life so as to make the best of the situation. Organizational support is most helpful in facilitating this type of proactive coping among practitioners. As our findings show, when there is more support from a practitioner‘s immediate supervisor at work, more positive thinking is likely to be used in coping with work-life conflict. In addition, whether an organization‘s culture is open or closed to work-life balance also influences how much practitioners use positive thinking under stress: If an organization strongly believes and acts as if work is the only priority for an employee, then positive thinking route to coping is likely to be closed. This suggests that if an organization would like to make practitioners look at the bright side of work-life conflicts, institutionally, the organization needs 97
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2 0 1 2 P R O C E E D I N G S S A N
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Table of Contents Research Papers A
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RESEARCH PAPERS 5
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campus public relations agency. Wor
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involves researchers reviewing the
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showed generalizibility. Therefore,
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References Allen, M. J. (2004). Ass
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Table 2 Small sample of the evoluti
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Table 4 Instrument Refinement Data
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Table 5 Instrument Refinement Data
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Appendix Firm‟s Logo Client Satis
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This section addresses how you feel
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Communication Tools/Tactics Created
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Communication Skills of the Student
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Additional Comments This section al
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Hope for the Future: Millennial PR
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difference with their work, and the
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with participants lacking discretio
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advise on the best strategy, not to
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opportunities.‖ She also added th
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answering all of these questions th
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2011). The lack of control some Mil
Page 45 and 46: References Berger, B. K., & Reber,
Page 47 and 48: Looking Back, Looking Forward: A Th
Page 49 and 50: Internet and Web would help democra
Page 51 and 52: In 2010, Smith (2010b) used Twitter
Page 53 and 54: ecently reported implications of Wi
Page 55 and 56: Internet, as well as the role of cu
Page 57 and 58: In 2011, Freberg, Graham, McGaughey
Page 59 and 60: Conclusion Figure 1 on the followin
Page 61 and 62: How can new media be used to increa
Page 63 and 64: DiStaso, M.W. (2012). Measuring pub
Page 65 and 66: Johnson, M.A. (1997). Public relati
Page 67 and 68: McKeown, C.A., & Plowman, K.D. (199
Page 69 and 70: Sweetser, K.D. (2007). Blog bias: R
Page 71 and 72: Yang, A., & Taylor, M. (2010). Rela
Page 73 and 74: effective public relations practiti
Page 75 and 76: Additionally, many public relations
Page 77 and 78: evidence has suggested that public
Page 79 and 80: As indicated in the literature revi
Page 81 and 82: This study shows several areas in w
Page 83 and 84: Table 4: Distribution Across Employ
Page 85 and 86: Table 7: Frequency of Engagement in
Page 87 and 88: Table 8: Frequency of Use of KSAs b
Page 89 and 90: In the context of the public relati
Page 91 and 92: Lazarus and Folkman (1984) proposed
Page 93 and 94: identified as educators, and who sk
Page 95: practitioners were confronted with
Page 99 and 100: extend one‘s social capital; in c
Page 101 and 102: Duhachek, A. (2005). Coping: A mult
Page 103 and 104: 5. Instrumental Support I tried to
Page 105 and 106: Table 2 Hierarchical Regressions Pr
Page 107 and 108: elations effects are generally long
Page 109 and 110: includes the effects of distributed
Page 111 and 112: [INSERT TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE] The Gra
Page 113 and 114: David, P., Kline, S., & Dai, Y. (20
Page 115 and 116: Table 2 Augmented Dickey-Fuller uni
Page 117 and 118: Table 6 The result of the Toda and
Page 119 and 120: Communication Excellence and Public
Page 121 and 122: organize and integrate a group of p
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Page 125 and 126: One participant expressed her perce
Page 127 and 128: Dozier, D. M., Grunig, L. A., & Gru
Page 129 and 130: programs, [...] and the delineation
Page 131 and 132: Freidson, 2001; Krause, 1996). Moll
Page 133 and 134: and larger public relations departm
Page 135 and 136: Table 1 Professionalism Dimensions:
Page 137 and 138: Estimation for the initial measurem
Page 139 and 140: Figure 3: Coefficients are unstanda
Page 141 and 142: Bowen, S.A. (2007). Ethics and publ
Page 143 and 144: Krause, E. A. (1996). Death of the
Page 145 and 146: Weis, D., & Schank, M.J. (1997). To
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environments: inclusive and transfo
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Purpose How do PRSSA faculty advise
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Findings The descriptive data indic
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advisers were ethical values and or
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The recognition for long-term facul
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PEDAGOGICAL POSTERS 157
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Professional Development Assignment
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shadow a professional opened my eye
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Building Student Networking Skills:
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incentive for demonstrating great i
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Populating the E- Portfolio: Reflec
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Table 1: Management, Message Design
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Students were assigned 25 minute bl
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Some basic Google Analytics reports
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4. Some keywords generate more clic
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Do this Click on “Content,” the
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Preparing Backgrounders and Proposa
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going out to eat. But what does tha
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Teaching and Mentoring Through Soci
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prevalent in journalism students wh
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normalization was utilized as the r
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But what about the students in grou
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“How a Graduate Practicum Class H
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O How did the client feel about the
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students practice skills and educat
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References Bagglione, S. (2006) Rol
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etween client preferences, practice
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References Austin, L.L., & Toth, E.
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webinars that will be used in one o
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Assessing the State of Public Relat
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adequately prepares students for la
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eviewed articles; the other two may
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The remaining points possible were
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2012 PROCEEDINGS - Public Relations Society of America

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