Career & Family Experiences of U.S. College Graduates with Business Majors

We collected qualitative and quantitative data from 70 individuals at different life stages to examine work-family management strategies adopted by men and women across four career-family centrality profiles: career-centric, family-centric, dual-centric, and other-centric. Participants were recruited by emailing business school alumni from a large southeastern U.S. university. Variables include: career and family role orientation, career satisfiers and demographics. At the end of the survey, the participants were asked if they would be interested in being interviewed about their life and career experiences, after which 283 expressed interest. Because of the in-depth nature of the follow-up study, we limited the sample to 100 participants for the interviews. To ensure heterogeneity of the sample, we intentionally selected interviewees from different age groups, with different marital and family statuses, and with diverse employment statuses in order to gather data on work-family strategies from individuals with different lifestyles and in different life stages. A total of 70 participants completed the interview process.