Forshaw Ashlee, Alfrey Kristie-Lee, Vandelanotte Corneel, Gardner Benjamin, Rebar Amanda L
Motivation of Health Behaviours Lab; Appleton Institute; School of Health, Medical, and Applied Sciences; Central Queensland UniversityRockhampton, Australia.
School of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2025 Apr 24;20(4):e0322337. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0322337. eCollection 2025.
Fly-in fly-out (FIFO) work involves commuting long distances and living in provided accommodation for 1-4 weeks while on shift. Little is known about couple communication and relationship satisfaction of this population. Separate cohorts of FIFO workers and partners of FIFO workers completed daily surveys to self-report time spent communicating with their partner (in person, over the computer, and by phone) and relationship satisfaction for up to 7 days during on-shift and 7 days during off-shift periods (806 observations from N = 106 with 19 couples). For FIFO workers, but not partners of FIFO workers, relationship satisfaction was lower during on-shift days than off-shift days. This difference was completely mediated by time spent communicating with romantic partner, such that after accounting for the impact of lower time spent communicating on relationship satisfaction, there remained no significant difference in relationship satisfaction on-shift vs off-shift. Communication between FIFO workers and their romantic partners is essential to ensure the relationship does not suffer while the worker is away from home. FIFO organisations need to investigate ways to ensure quality communication between romantic partners can be maintained while the worker is on-site and partner spend long periods of time away from one another.
轮班工作（FIFO）涉及长途通勤，并在轮班期间在提供的住所居住1至4周。对于这一人群的夫妻沟通和关系满意度，我们知之甚少。轮班工作者及其伴侣的不同队列完成了每日调查，以自我报告与伴侣交流的时间（面对面、通过电脑和电话）以及在轮班期间7天和非轮班期间7天的关系满意度（来自106人、19对夫妻的806次观察）。对于轮班工作者而言，而非轮班工作者的伴侣，轮班期间的关系满意度低于非轮班期间。这种差异完全由与浪漫伴侣交流的时间所介导，即在考虑到交流时间减少对关系满意度的影响后，轮班和非轮班期间的关系满意度没有显著差异。轮班工作者与其浪漫伴侣之间的沟通对于确保工人离家期间关系不受影响至关重要。轮班工作组织需要研究各种方法，以确保在工人在现场且伴侣长时间分离的情况下，浪漫伴侣之间能够保持高质量的沟通。
