Research Article Examining Behavioural Coping Strategies as Mediators between Work-Family Conflict and Psychological Distress Sanaz Aazami, 1,2 Khadijah Shamsuddin, 2 and Syaqirah Akmal 2 1 Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Ilam University of Medical Science, Ilam 56000, Iran 2 Department of Community Health, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 56000 Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Correspondence should be addressed to Sanaz Aazami; aazamisanaz@gmail.com Received 7 July 2014; Revised 21 December 2014; Accepted 11 January 2015 Academic Editor: Ann M. Mitchell Copyright © 2015 Sanaz Aazami et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We examined the mediating role of behavioral coping strategies in the association between work-family conlict and psychological distress. In particular, we examined the two directions of work-family conlict, namely, work interference into family and family interference into work. Furthermore, two coping styles in this study were adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies. his cross-sectional study was conducted among 429 Malaysian working women using self-reported data. he results of mediational analysis in the present study showed that adaptive coping strategy does not signiicantly mediate the efect of work-family conlict on psychological distress. However, maladaptive coping strategies signiicantly mediate the efect of work-family conlict on psychological distress. hese results show that adaptive coping strategies, which aimed to improve the stressful situation, are not efective in managing stressor such as work-family conlict. We found that experiencing interrole conlict steers employees toward frequent use of maladaptive coping strategies which in turn lead to psychological distress. Interventions targeted at improvement of coping skills which are according to individual’s needs and expectation may help working women to balance work and family demands. he important issue is to keep in mind that efective coping strategies are to control the situations not to eliminate work- family conlict. 1. Introduction he psychologically important aspects of everybody’s life are employment, marriage, and parenting [1]. Engaging in work, family, and parenting roles could have a constructive impact on an individual’s life [2]. Nevertheless, lack of ability to balance the responsibilities associated with these roles can lead to conlict between work and family domains [3]. Work-family conlict is frequently deined as “a form of interrole conlict” in which the behavioural requirements associated with the role performed in the work and family domains are mutually incompatible [4]. Initially, it is sup- posed to be a unidimensional construct but Gutek et al. [5] proposed a bidirectional nature of conlict between work and family. Family roles and responsibilities interfere into work role, which is called Family Interference into Work (FIW). On the other hand, work roles and responsibilities can interfere with family role, which is called Work Interference into Family (WIF). his is a reciprocal relationship; in which work issues occur if the job obligations remain unfulilled because a person’s family interferes with work. Consequently, work issues spill over into the family matters, causing work to interfere with family domain. herefore, the two directions of work-family interference need to be distinguished and assessed separately because each one may have a unique set of consequences. In this study, we used the two directions of WIF and FIW to examine their outcomes separately. Conlicting demands between work and family is shown to be associated with organizational consequences, such as turnover intention [6], job dissatisfaction [7], absenteeism, lower job commitment [8], and burnout [9]. On the other hand, experiencing work-family conlict especially among employed women has become a great source of stress [10] which can afect individuals’ health and wellbeing [11]. his can be explained by lower level of stress among individuals who have a balanced work-family life. hose individuals who balanced their work and family demands, use routines that avoid long term and chronic work-family conlict. In Hindawi Publishing Corporation e Scientific World Journal Volume 2015, Article ID 343075, 7 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/343075