Time Dedicated to Family by University Students: Differences by Academic Area in a Case Study

We provided evidence of the time dedicated to family by undergraduate students, in the context of their particular work–family conflict, and we then evaluated their level of satisfaction. We did so by differentiating four academic areas: Economics, Arts and Philosophy, Science and Engineering, and Health. We compared our evidence to that obtained for the dedication of students to society and to friends. Our results indicated that Arts and Philosophy students exhibited a greater probability of contributing time to the family. Regarding satisfaction, we found no differences in the contribution to family by field of study, although students of Health contributed more of their time and income to NGOs, and students of Arts and Philosophy contributed more of their time to society, relative to students of Economics. Furthermore, we found that students in Arts and Philosophy contributed less of their time to helping friends, relative to students of Economics, and that students in other branches of knowledge obtained higher satisfaction regarding their contribution to family, society, and friends, than did students of Economics. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015