Homesickness: a comparative study of defense and civilian employees and individual differences

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.

Elderly’s Homesickness: Development of Elderly Homesickness Questionnaire

“…Consistent with prior studies, homesickness is higher among the elderly with lower education, lower monthly income, and manual labor occupations. 56,57 Higher educational attainment, income and job complexity are associated with better mental health. 58,59 In the spatiotemporal dimension, homesickness is higher among the elderly who migrated across provinces and with shorter periods of residence, which is consistent with the prior findings.…”

Homesickness and individual differences: defense and civilian employees

“…The review is based on “Homesickness: a comparative study of defense and civilian employees and individual differences,” by Garg et al (2022), published in International Journal of Organizational Analysis .…”

“…A research paper by Garg et al (2022) investigates the feeling of homesickness among working professionals. In addition it examines the differences in homesickness between military and civil employees across the variables of gender, education, age, marital status and family type.…”

Exploring intergenerational differences in the virtue of appreciation at the workplace

“…On the social front, it facilitates equal and fair opportunities for all and eliminates stereotyping and prejudice against a specific group or category of people. Workforce diversity is also recommended as an indirect persuasion towards an egalitarian society (Garg et al , 2021). From a business perspective, employee diversity promotes diverse ideas, perspectives, ways of working and cognition styles, which breed innovation and creativity.…”

“…Researchers have concluded that different generations develop distinct differences and characteristics (Rank and Contreras, 2021; Twenge, 2010; Rudolph et al , 2020; Lang, 2020). Previous studies have reported significant generation-based variations in employee’s attitudes (Alferjany and Alias, 2020), homesickness (Garg et al , 2021), motivational drives (Wong et al , 2008), learning orientation (D’Amato and Herzfeldt, 2008), work motivation (Deal Stawiski et al , 2013), career types and success (Dries et al , 2008), etc. Although adequate studies have explored generational differences at the workplace, there is a call to examine significantly internalized, personalized and latent traits and emotions such as spirituality, gratitude, appreciation, compassion and happiness among employees of different generational cohorts.…”