An Assessment of the Psychometric Evidence from Household Work Satisfaction of Women

Abstract

Psychometrics has been understood as the branch of psychology that deals with the design, administration, and interpretation of quantitative tests for the measurement of psychological variables such as intelligence, aptitude, personality traits. On the other hand, a focus in the literature on determinants of women’s health is the cost and benefit of occupying multiple roles as employee, spouse, and mother, yet little attention has been given to the work and home characteristics of different roles for women in paid and unpaid work. The impact of work- home factors on socio-economic gradients in health has also tended to be overlooked. This paper assesses the contribution of work home factors on socio-economic differences in psychological distress among women. Once the few tools available to measure the Quality of Household Work (QoHW) roles do not include psychometric evidence, a new instrument to assess all aspects of the QoHW and to prove its validity and reliability is of paramount importance. QoHW measures initially operated at the quantitative level, specifically measuring the amount of time spent in a role and the number of roles women have, and none to evaluate their degree of satisfaction. The present work seeks to close this gap by introducing an Artificial Intelligence based computer environment that being built according to a cognitive interpretation of the Theory of Coherence, enables the processing of a series of questionnaires on a range of HW topics that pinpoint those the women may enjoy to accomplish and the level of satisfaction with what they are doing.