Katherine I. Miller’s research while affiliated with Arizona State University and other places

This study considered the nature of home/work stress and investigated the role of social support from both intra- and extraorganizational sources in reducing that stress and buffering its impact on burnout. Specifically, demographic factors affecting perceptions of home/work stress and the impact of various sources of social support were examined. Data were collected from nursing-home nurses and analyzed using regression techniques. Results suggested that participants with children and those cohabiting with their partners were particularly vulnerable to home/work stress. Results also indicated that different sources of social support worked in unique ways to relieve the strain of home/work stress. Implications of this research for theory on social support are considered, along with the pragmatic suggestions for using study results in dealing with home/work stress.

This article presents the results of a research project designed to determine the impact of specific types of supportive communication on burnout, organizational commitment, and retention for practicing nurses. Hypotheses regarding the influence of informational, emotional, and instrumental social support were tested with survey data gathered from a large group of employed nurses. Results indicate targeted effects of instrumental and informational support, but broader effects for emotional support in organizational outcomes. Although significant relations were found for supportive communication and personal control, results indicate that other rationales explaining the link between social support and burnout may be warranted. The implications for theory and research are discussed.

the meanings people associate with supportive relationships and messages are scrutinized / describe 2 approaches for studying supportive messages and relationships: the study of memorable messages (where participants describe specific messages recalled as providing significant support), and the study of semantic networks (wherein network linkages are based, not on formal roles of interaction patterns, but on shared meanings and interpretations) / [suggest] the analysis of such meaning structures may contribute to explaining why, for example, support from coworkers more effectively manages work-related stresses than support from family members (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

The research reported here considered a critical problem facing today's hospital: burnout and commitment of nurses. A review of the literature revealed that nurse communication, particularly participation or collaboration in patient care decisions, had rarely been considered in models of nurse commitment. A model was proposed in which nurse participation and assertiveness were key predictors of emotional exhaustion, commitment and intent to remain, and the theoretical construct of personal control was used as a moderating variable in predicting these outcomes. The model was tested on a sample of nurses from a large hospital Results were generally supportive of the proposed model. Implications of the model for theory were discussed in terms of the role of personal control and the importance of nurse assertiveness, and applications for nurse and physician training were considered.

The purpose of this investigation was to develop and test a causal model of the relationships among burnout, communication, and organizational stressors, and outcomes in the educational setting. Past studies of burnout have shown that the variables of overload, role conflict, and role ambiguity are associated with burnout, job satisfaction, and occupational commitment. Variables related to communication within schools mediate the burnout process, e.g., support from the principal and participation in decision making. The causal model developed in this paper indicates that teachers’ workload and support from their principal influenced role conflict and role ambiguity. These role stressors, in turn, influenced perceptions of burnout, job satisfaction, and occupational commitment.

This study examined the relationship among structural communicative variables and perceptions of social support, stress, and burnout in a sample of elementary school teachers. Specifically, it was hypothesized that participation in decision making, network link strength, and link multiplexity would influence perceptions of supervisory (principal) and co-worker support. These perceptions, and workload, then influence burnout and job satisfaction. The results provide support for a model that (a) suggests a differentiation between relational depth and relational breadth in predicting perceived support, (b) highlights the importance of supportive communication in reducing role ambiguity, and (c) suggests that burnout has distinctive affective and exhaustion dimensions that should be considered in future research.

This article investigates the formulation of supervisory feedback messages as a function of attributions regarding poor subordinate performance and feedback goals. Theory and research drawn from feedback and attribution literatures were used to develop the research question. Data to investigate the research question were drawn from nurse managers at general hospitals. The results indicate that the goal of supervisors is an important driving force in determining the type of feedback generated, whereas attributions for poor performance had relatively few effects on the generation of feedback messages. Overall, there was a strong dominance of work-oriented feedback messages and altruism-oriented feedback messages. The implications of the model for theory and practice are discussed.

This research presents an integration of past research and theory that models the impact of stressful aspects of the workplace and key communication variables on employee burnout, occupational commitment, and work satisfaction. Two theoretical frameworks—social information processing theory (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978) and uncertainty reduction theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1975)—are drawn on to propose a model in which communication variables lead to two stress variables then to burnout and finally to job satisfaction and occupational commitment. Data to test the proposed models were drawn from employees at a private psychiatric hospital. The results indicate that both participation in decision making and social support have important impacts on perceived workplace stress, burnout, satisfaction, and commitment for both care-givers and support personnel. Perception of participation in the decision-making process was found to be particularly crucial in reducing role stress and increasing perceptions of satisfaction and personal accomplishment for hospital care-givers. The implications of the model for theory and practice are discussed.

This article reports on research that explored the experience of stress and burnout, and the influence of communicative variables on stress and burnout, in four distinct employee groups within a single organization. Research and theory reviewed suggest that distinctions in job characteristics and organizational subcultures should influence relationships among stressors, burnout, and communicative behaviors for different occupations. The research conducted bears this out. There were not large differences among employee groups in terms of levels of stress, burnout, and satisfaction, or in the relationships between stressors and burnout and between burnout and satisfaction. However, the role of communication in the burnout process varied in the different employee groups. Participation in decision making had a large impact on burnout for administrative employees and support from co-workers had a large effect on burnout for nursing employees.

This article discusses several concepts critical to the investigation of caregivers in home health care contexts. The variables caregiver involvement, social support, caregiver reactions, and mental health outcomes are discussed conceptually, and operationalizations for these concepts are proposed. The psychometric properties of the proposed scales and relations among these scales are tested on data derived from two samples of care providers for patients with Alzheimer's disease. The research confirms internally consistent measures for all scale variables and explores relations among these variables with regression and path analytic techniques. The model developed suggests the importance of communication variables (i.e., the availability of social resources and perceptions of social support) in positively affecting the caregiver's reactions to the caregiving situation and the caregiver's mental health.