Zahradka, Rudolph Adrian2024-08-152024-08-1519851985https://hdl.handle.net/1828/20258Disagreement exists about whether or not workers should vent work related feelings and concerns to off-the-job sup­port persons , such as a spouse . The present study concerned the costs and benefits , measured by workers' job burnout and marital satisfaction, involved when such work-disclosure occurred. The relationship between job burnout and marital satisfaction was also examined. A work-disclosure questionnaire , made up of 10 items taken from the 60-item Jourard Self-Disclosure Questionnaire plus two other items , the Maslach Burnout Inventory , and the Index of Marita l Satisfaction were administered to 60 nurses from three hospitals and a hospice in Victoria and Vancou­ver. The nurses , 58 females and 2 males , were required to have been in a marital-type relationship and working full time i n their current position for a minimum of one year. Planned testing for a non-linear relationship between work self - disclosure to spouse and marital satisfaction was prohibited, due to disproportionately high spousal disclosure scores . Alternative chi-square testing revealed no significant relationship between spousal-disclosure and marital satisfaction. The lack of significance in these results was attributed largely to shortcomings in both the self-disclosure questionnaire and the data collection procedure. Chi-square tests were conducted between nurses' work self-disclosure to 4 target persons and 6 burnout subscores. Of the 24 tests, only one chi-square value was significant, which was no greater than chance expectancy. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient was used to test for significant relationships between marital satisfac­tion and the burnout subscales. Although none was found, possible negative relationships were detected between marital satisfaction and the two emotional exhaustion burnout subscores. Subsiduary tests were conducted to examine the relation­ships that both nurses' age and number of children had with work self-disclosure, marital satisfaction and burnout. Spearman rank correlations revealed significant negative relationships between nurses' age and both work self-disclo­sure and burnout , while a negative relationship approaching significance resulted between age and marital satisfaction. The number of children that nurses had living at home with them was negatively related to marital satisfaction. Differences in burnout scores were also found between scores for nurses at different hospitals. These differences were partially attributed to differences in the ages of the nurses at the various institutions. During data collection, 55 of the nurses added written responses to indicate positive and negative factors affect­ing their lives. These factors were presented and dis­cussed. Recommendations were made for improvements in the self­-disclosure questionnaire and the data collection procedure. Areas for possible future research were suggested.84 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis