| We examine the relationship of work-specific stress (work stress, job dissatisfaction and rewards), negative self-feelings and substance use. Subjects are 4,155 young adults (age 2136) from the 4th wave of a longitudinal Study. The analysis uses the LISREL VIII to estimate a structural model with latent constructs. Two perspectives of organizational psychology inform an analysis: "alienation" and "generalization". The former postulates that work-specific alienation is most salient, while the latter suggests that generalized stress is more predictive of fluctuations in substance use. Literature shows equivocal evidences to date. In light of House's (1987) discussion of "cognitive stress" and "affective stress", we hypothesize that work-specific stress will increase workers' negative self-feelings and in turn increase their level of substance use. Moreover, since-work-specific stress is more cognitive than affective in nature, it will not increase workers' substance use while negative self-feelings is considered. The results show that most of our hypotheses are supported when gender and race are controlled. However, work stress has direct causal effect on substance use among males, while this is not the case among females, whites, or nonwhites. Among nonwhites, work stress does not predict negative self-feelings and negative self-feelings does not predict their substance use. |
Updated 05/20/2006