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Department of Legal Studies, The University of Mississippi, 202 Odom Hall, Mississippi, MS 38677, USA
School of Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University, Stratton 467, 521 Lancaster Avenue, Richmond, KY 40475, USA
School of Criminal Justice, Ferris State University, 525 Bishop Hall, Big Rapids, MI 49307, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 18 December 2014
Received in revised form 18 April 2015
Accepted 5 October 2015
Available online xxx
Keywords:
Correctional staff
Social support
Job stress
Job satisfaction
Job involvement
Organizational commitment
a b s t r a c t
The literature suggests that social support, in general, is linked to positive outcomes among
correctional staff, but the different types of social support may differ in their effects. Using
survey data from staff working at a privately-owned, maximum security prison for juveniles
sentenced as adults, this study analyzes three intra-organizational supports, administrative, supervisory, and coworker, and one extra-organizational form, family/friends support,
as antecedents of job stress, job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Personal variables serve as controls. Administrative and supervisory support are
inversely related to job stress, while job involvement is affected positively by supervisory support and negatively by family/friends support. All three intra-organizational forms
of support are signicant antecedents of job satisfaction and organizational commitment
however family/friends support is not. These ndings hold implications for improving job
outcomes among correctional staff and for future research.
2015 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2015.10.001
0362-3319/ 2015 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Lambert, E. G., et al. Social supports relationship to correctional staff
job stress, job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The Social Science Journal (2015),
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their willindividuals who have been convicted of violating criminal law. As Armstrong and Grifn (2004) point out,
Few other organizations are charged with the central task
of supervising and securing an unwilling and potentially
violent population (p. 577). As the work environment in
prisons varies from that found in most other organizations,
the factors which inuence job stress, job involvement, job
satisfaction, and organizational commitment may also vary
compared to other organizations. Research needs to identify factors that mitigate job stress and contribute to the
prison staffs job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.
The literature suggests that social support is important
for staff to deal with the unique strains and challenges
encountered in a prison work environment (Keinan &
Maslach-Pines, 2007; Whitehead & Lindquist, 1986). Social
support should help staff deal with strains that would
otherwise increase job stress and decrease job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.
There are different types of social support, and the literature is limited and unclear about what types of social
support are linked with job stress, job involvement, job
satisfaction, and organizational commitment among prison
staff. This studys objective is to explore the nature of the
relationship between administrative support, supervisory
support, coworker support, and family and friends support
with job stress, job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Expanding knowledge of these
relationships provides a framework for the future development of research in this area and provides correctional
administrators with information on how different forms of
social support affect prison staff.
1. Literature review
1.1. Job stress
According to Matteson and Ivancevich (1987), there are
literally hundreds of denitions for stress to be found in the
research and professional literature. Virtually all of them
can be placed into one of two categories, however: stress
can be dened as either a stimulus or a response (p. 10).
Stressors are negative stimuli that cause strain for a person,
which ultimately can result in stress (Cullen, Link, Wolfe,
& Frank, 1985). Job stress is psychological strain leading to
leading to job-related hardness, tension, anxiety, frustration, and worry arising from work (Misis, Kim, Cheeseman,
Hogan, & Lambert, 2013). Job stress can be harmful over
time, leading to increased mental withdrawal from the job,
reduced interactions with clients and coworkers, increased
conict with family and friends, absenteeism, substance
abuse, turnover, burnout, health/medical problems, and
even premature death (Cheek, 1984; Cheek & Miller, 1983;
Lambert, Edwards, Camp, & Saylor, 2005a; Matteson &
Ivancevich, 1987; Mitchell, MacKenzie, Styve, & Gover,
2000; Slate & Vogel, 1997; Whitehead, 1989; Whitehead
& Lindquist, 1986; Woodruff, 1993). Job stress is harmful to both staff and the prison organization, and its
antecedents need to be studied. Social support may be one
such antecedent.
Please cite this article in press as: Lambert, E. G., et al. Social supports relationship to correctional staff
job stress, job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The Social Science Journal (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2015.10.001
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SOCSCI-1290; No. of Pages 11
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Please cite this article in press as: Lambert, E. G., et al. Social supports relationship to correctional staff
job stress, job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The Social Science Journal (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2015.10.001
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1
The survey measured a wide array of workplace perceptions, views,
attitudes, intentions, and behaviors of employees. Because of the wealth
of information from the survey, other studies have been conducted using
different parts of the survey. The full citations of these studies are available
upon request. None of these previous studies examined the impact of the
four forms of social support on job stress, job involvement, job satisfaction,
and organizational commitment together.
Please cite this article in press as: Lambert, E. G., et al. Social supports relationship to correctional staff
job stress, job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The Social Science Journal (2015),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2015.10.001
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coworkers provide me support in solving personal problems, and The people I work with are friendly. An index
for support for family and friends comprises two items. For
example, one item is When my job gets me down, I know
that I can turn to family and friends for support. Finally,
the personal characteristics of gender, age, tenure, position, educational level, race, and supervisory status were
included in the study more as control than explanatory
variables. See Table 1 for how these personal characteristics
are coded.
2.2. Variables
3. Results
Please cite this article in press as: Lambert, E. G., et al. Social supports relationship to correctional staff
job stress, job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The Social Science Journal (2015),
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6
Table 1
Descriptive statistics for study variables.
Variable
Description
Gender
Md
Min
Max
Age
Mean
.59
SD
.49
33
19
68
35.77
10.82
Tenure
17
53
20.64
13.84
Position
.62
.49
Educ level
.47
.50
Race
.79
.50
Supervisor
.21
.41
Admin support
10
5.31
2.21
Super support
11
20
10.92
3.67
Cowrk support
20
27
19.52
4.53
Family support
10
7.12
1.72
Job stress
14
25
14.29
4.51
Job involve
15
5.90
2.51
Job sat
19
25
18.34
4.67
Org commit
19
10
26
18.14
4.00
Note. Md stands for median value, Min stands for minimum value, Max stands for maximum value, SD stands for standard deviation, CO stands for
correctional ofcer, Educ stands for educational, Supervisor for supervisory status, Admin stands for administrative, Super stands for supervisory, Cowrk
stands for coworker, Family stands for family and friends, involve stands for involvement, sat stands for satisfaction, Org commit stands for organizational
commitment, and stands for Cronbachs alpha, a measure of internal reliability. For Educ level, having a college degree includes those who had earned
an Associates/Vocational degree, a Bachelors degree, and Graduate/Professional degree. The data for this table are from a survey of 160 staff members at
private Midwestern prison for juvenile offenders tried as adults.
Table 2
Pearson correlation matrix for study variables.
Variables
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
1. Gender
2. Age
3. Tenure
4. Position
5. Educ lev
6. Race
7. Supervisor
8. Adm sup
9. Sup
10. Co sup
11. Fam sup
12. Job str
13. Job inv
14. Job sat
15. Org com
1.00
.17*
.00
.28**
.13
.08
.12
.02
.05
.06
.06
.12
.03
.07
.05
1.00
.07
.53**
.14
.05
.16*
.29**
.21**
.13
.05
.02
.01
.18*
.17*
1.00
.20**
.05
.06
.39**
.09
.05
.13
.04
.20*
.12
.07
.04
1.00
.29**
.02
.47**
.32**
.30**
.26**
.01
.07
.27**
.30**
.24**
1.00
.05
.16*
.09
.15
.05
.08
.01
.13
.18*
.12
1.00
.04
.11
.06
.11
.14
.04
.05
.01
.00
1.00
.29**
.27**
.02
.03
.10
.26**
.28**
.23**
1.00
.76**
.49**
.20*
.49**
.37**
.57**
.66**
1.00
.42**
.13
.51**
.43**
.57**
.68**
1.00
.35**
.31**
.21**
.40**
.46**
1.00
.11
.10
.09
.16*
1.00
.34**
.70**
.53**
1.00
.41**
.46**
1.00
.75**
Note. See Table 1 for a description of the variables and how they were coded. Educ lev stands for educational level, Supervisor for supervisory status, Adm
sup stands for administrative support, Sup for supervisory support, Co sup for coworker support, Fam sup for family and friends support, Job str for job
stress, Job inv for job involvement, Job sat for job satisfaction, and Org com for organizational commitment. The data for this table are from a survey of 160
staff members at private Midwestern prison for juvenile offenders tried as adults.
*
p .05.
**
p .01.
Please cite this article in press as: Lambert, E. G., et al. Social supports relationship to correctional staff
job stress, job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The Social Science Journal (2015),
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Table 3
Multivariate ordinary least squares regression results.
Variables
Gender
Age
Tenure
Position
Educ level
Race
Supervisor
Admin support
Super support
Cowrk support
Family support
R-Squared
Job stress
Job involvement
Job satisfaction
1.00
0.05
0.04
0.14
0.57
1.13
0.11
0.48
0.41
0.07
0.11
0.11
0.11
0.14
0.02
0.06
0.1
0.01
.24*
.34**
0.07
0.04
0.41
0.06
0.02
1.24
0.08
0.37
0.07
0.17
0.21
0.04
0.31
0.08
.26**
0.12
.24*
0.02
0.06
0.01
0.15
.30**
0.07
.21**
.35**
.31**
.96
.01
.03
.86
.77
.87
1.09
.47
.37
.16
.17
Org commitment
.10
.03
.08
.09
.08
.08
.10
.22*
.29**
.16*
.06
.43
.01
.01
.00
.11
.89
.16
.52
.44
.16
.07
.05
.02
.02
.00
.01
.09
.02
.28**
.40**
.18*
.03
.42**
.54**
Note. See Table 1 for a description of the variables and how they were coded. B stands for the unstandardized regression coefcient, for the standardized
regression coefcient, Educ for educational, Supervisor for supervisory status, Admin for administrative, Super for supervisory, Cowrk for coworker, Family
for family and friends, and Org for organizational. The data for this table is from a survey of 160 staff members at private Midwestern prison for juvenile
offenders tried as adults.
*
p .05.
**
p .01.
Please cite this article in press as: Lambert, E. G., et al. Social supports relationship to correctional staff
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Please cite this article in press as: Lambert, E. G., et al. Social supports relationship to correctional staff
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job stress, job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The Social Science Journal (2015),
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