Work and Leisure

vehemence and wide visibility of the current “running-out-of-time” argumentmay relate to the specific life-circumstances of the writers on this subjectand perhaps to some degree to their readers’. Implicit in Gershuny’sobservation is yet another concern, namely that respondents’ greater willingnessto report high levels of time pressure is a result of an ‘echo-chambereffect’. In an environment where misrepresented research findings are citedrepeatedly, they ‘start to carry the weight of unquestioned truth’ (Loftuset al. 1995).In an attempt to resolve this controversy we turn to the survey evidenceand focus on three interrelated issues:• the relationship between the hours of work and perceived experience oftime pressure• the incidence of perceived time pressure across population groups• other factors contributing to higher levels of time pressure.These issues are now discussed in turn.Work, leisure, time-pressure and stress 127Heavier workloads – higher levels of time pressure!Analyses of Canadian data show that there is an apparent relationshipbetween respondents’ hours of paid work and their levels of perceived timepressure. In 1998 some 88 per cent of respondents working over 50 hours perweek reported feeling rushed on an almost daily basis. For respondents workingunder 30 hours per week this figure was only 53 per cent. As shown inTable 7.3, the ‘composite index of time pressure’ for employees workingunder 30 hours per week is 45 points on a 100-point scale, but for employeesworking 40 to 50 hours it is 61 points, and for employees working in excess of50 hours it is 65 points.It has been suggested, for example by Greenhaus and Parasuraman(1987), that the effects of paid and unpaid work on time pressure and stressshould not be examined separately but jointly. According to Joner andFletcher (1993), research on the interface between work and family suggeststhat these two domains are functionally interdependent and the events in onesphere impinge on the other. Not surprisingly, the association betweenrespondents’ combined paid and unpaid workloads and perceived time pressureis positive. As shown in Table 7.3, 89 per cent of those with combined workloadsin excess of 12 hours per day reported feeling ‘rushed’ almost dailycompared with only 52 per cent of those with combined workloads of fewerthan 8 hours per day. The relationship between amount of free time and senseof being pressed for time is, as expected, inverse to the relationship betweentime crunch and the amount of work. Only half of respondents reportingmore than 7 hours of free time per day felt rushed on an almost daily basis,compared to 85 per cent of respondents with fewer than 3 hours.