Homesickness: a comparative study of defense and civilian employees and individual differences
International Journal of Organizational Analysis
ISSN: 1934-8835
Article publication date: 8 February 2021
Issue publication date: 7 December 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Most of the studies in the field of homesickness are confined to students; this study aims to explore the feeling of homesickness among working professionals. Also, it tends to examine individual differences in the experience of homesickness across employees of different gender, ages, experience, family type, etc. The study also aspires to compare homesickness among military and civil employees.
Design/methodology/approach
The study explores five dimensions of homesickness, namely, missing family, missing friend, rumination about home, feeling lonely and adjustment problems. The collected data is subjected to reliability, validity and confirmatory factor analysis. Further, t-test and analysis of variance are used to explore homesickness differences across soldiers and corporate employees.
Findings
The study reveals that homesickness is significantly higher for employees in the male, unmarried, nuclear family, above the age of 45 years, and below the graduation category. Also, defense people experience more homesickness than civilian employees.
Originality/value
This study is one of the pioneer studies that compare homesickness among defense and civilian employees. Also, variables such as type of family, the experience of employees and marital status have hardly been explored in the literature of homesickness.
Keywords
Citation
Garg, N., Punia, B.K., Kakkar, V. and Kumari, S. (2022), "Homesickness: a comparative study of defense and civilian employees and individual differences", International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Vol. 30 No. 6, pp. 1286-1308. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOA-07-2020-2305
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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