An important part of the lives of students takes place at school. However, students also spend time working, spend time with their family and are involved in leisure activities such as exercising and spending time with friends. Consequently, students need to combine their role as a student with their roles an employee, family member and friend.

In recent decades, many studies have been conducted on the combination of different roles. These studies have predominantly investigated negative aspects of combining roles (e.g. Byron, 2005; Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1992; Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985), which is called conflict. The underlying assumption of these studies has been that one role is made more difficult by another role and vice versa. More recently, however, also positive aspects of combining roles have been proposed (e.g. Butler, 2007; Carlson, Kacmar, Wayne, & Grzywacz, 2006), which is called facilitation.

In the present study, we focus on conflict and facilitation (i.e. the interface) between students’ roles in the domains of work, family and leisure in relationship with their role as a student. It is investigated whether the possible work-study, family-study and leisure-study interfaces affect the academic success of students in higher education.

Both internationally as well as in The Netherlands, the majority of college students are employed, indicating that many students combine their role as a university student with paid employment. Inter-role processes in the work and study domain were tested by Butler (2007). Several job characteristics appeared to relate to work-study conflict (WSC) (e.g. work hours) and work-study facilitation (WSF) (e.g. job control). WSC was negatively related to school performance, while WSF was positively related to school performance (Butler, 2007). These results indicate that working besides studying does not need to decrease students’ academic performance, as it may depend on the kind of job students are employed in.

Students’ family plays an important role in obtaining study success (e.g. Kuh, Kinzie, Buckley, Bridges, & Hayek, 2006). Similar to the work–study interface, students need to combine their role as a student with their role as a family member (Authors, 2011). In a previous study, we demonstrated that processes of conflict and facilitation also operate between the family and study domains. Family-study conflict (FSC) was negatively related to study effort and family-study facilitation (FSF) positively contributed to study effort. Study effort positively predicted students’ academic performance (Authors, 2011).

To our knowledge, much less research has been conducted on the interface between leisure and study, than on the interface between work and study, and family and study. In addition, leisure activities may have a different relationship with academic outcomes than employment (Derous & Ryan, 2008). In general, positive relations have been found between high-school performance and student participation in extracurricular activities, other than employment (Valentine, Cooper, Bettencourt, & DuBois, 2002). However, too much as well as too little distraction seems detrimental (Cooper, Valentine, Nye, and Lindsey, 1999). The focus of the present study was the relationship between leisure-study conflict (LSC) and leisure-study facilitation (LSF) and students’ effortful behaviors and academic performance.

In sum, by expanding on earlier interface models (e.g. Butler, 2007), in the present study an overall picture of student life will be created by developing an overall study-interface model, consisting of work-study, family-study, and leisure-study conflict and facilitation. By testing our overall hypothesized structural path model, we expect to find an answer on what aspects of the lives on students (from the domains of work, family and leisure) decrease (conflict) and/ or increase (facilitation) the academic outcomes of students in higher education. 

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