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Undergraduate students from lower social class backgrounds may experience poorer academic and life satisfaction when encountering classism in higher education. However, few studies have examined links among classism, career, academic, and well-being outcomes among undergraduate students, and existing studies have been cross-sectional. Therefore, this study examined longitudinal relations between classism and academic and life satisfaction in a sample of undergraduate students and examined work volition as a mediator of these relations. With a large sample of undergraduate students surveyed five times over the course of an academic year, we found that institutional classism predicted greater interpersonal classism and lower work volition over time. In turn, work volition predicted both greater academic and life satisfaction over time. This study has implications for understanding factors that affect the retention of students from lower social class backgrounds and how institutions of higher education can intervene to address barriers faced by economically marginalized students.

Using the Psychology of Working Theory as a guide, the goal of this study was to examine the longitudinal relations of economic deprivation to work volition and work volition to academic satisfaction among college students. We sampled 1508 students and surveyed them at three time points over a 6-month period. We found that economic deprivation partially predicted work volition over time, and work volition consistently predicted academic satisfaction over time. These results have theoretical implications as well as relevance to personnel working with economically marginalized college students.

The goal of the current study was to experimentally manipulate perceived overqualification (POQ) among a sample of therapists and assess this manipulation's effect on task meaningfulness, positive affect, and negative affect. To conduct the experiment, we had participants read a clinical case vignette and then randomly assigned them to answer questions using their specialized clinical skills (control group) or using simple recall and transcription (perceived overqualification group). The POQ group reported significantly greater perceived overqualification and significantly less task meaningfulness than the control group. Perceived overqualification also mediated the relation between the experimental condition and task meaningfulness. The groups did not differ on positive or negative affect. Results support previous research and theory suggesting that perceived overqualification can have deleterious effects on job attitudes, which has implications for organizational and individual interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maternity leave includes the time that mothers take off from work to care for their baby and heal after childbirth. The United States' maternity leave provisions lag behind other industrialized countries, resulting in poor quality maternity leave (QML) for many mothers. Accordingly, scholars have begun examining QML, a new construct that captures mothers' subjective experiences of their leave, including dimensions like time off and flexibility. However, researchers know little about predictors and outcomes of QML. Therefore, in this literature review, we will integrate societal-, work-, and individual-level predictors as well as well-being and work-related outcomes of maternity leave into a testable conceptual framework for QML. This review has important implications for U.S. policy makers and organizations regarding their support of mothers. Future research should continue to build this framework to ensure that mothers and parents in the United States and internationally are provided the QML they need to thrive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maternity leave is not federally guaranteed or paid in the United States. Although there has been an increase of women in the workforce, federal maternity leave policy has not changed since the adoption of the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993. The subjective quality of this maternity leave is likely an important component of what mothers perceive to be decent work. However, no scholars have developed measurements examining mothers' subjective experiences of the quality of their maternity leave. Therefore, the goal of the current research was to develop scales measuring six domains of quality of maternity leave: time off, flexibility, coworker support, discrimination, microaggressions, and benefits (e.g., pay, health care, disability insurance). In two studies with diverse samples of working, adult mothers, we provide evidence for the factor structure, validity, and internal consistency of the Quality of Maternity Leave Scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]