Corporations and two-career families

The purpose of this study was to explore two-career families and the corporations that employ them to determine how the couples are managing their lives and what the corporations are doing to help or hinder couples in a dual career situation.

A sample of 407 Fortune 1300 corporations responded to a four-page questionnaire. Eight-hundred-sixteen couples (1,632 respondents) who satisfied the requirements responded individually to identical six-page questionnaires. A couple was included if the wife had a career in the business community. The husband's career could be in any professional field. Major questions addressed in the corporate survey include attitudes about and the effect of two-career families on recruitment and relocation practices, productivity, and profit; steps taken by the corporation to alleviate the problems of two-career families; satisfaction with formal or informal programs; and further steps to address the issue. Questions addressed in the couples survey included social, economic, and geographic characteristics of two-career couples; how they balance demands of effectiveness at work and responsibility to family; how couples handle relocation, child care, and household responsibilities; satisfaction with careers, marriage, and combination of the two; and kinds and amounts of stress experienced.

The Murray Center has computer-accessible data from both questionnaires; in addition, a subset of the computer data comprised of 500 couples and 174 variables was created specifically for use in research methodology and statistics courses.