Dissertation

Two studies of family functioning: A laymen's prototype of high-functioning families and outcomes in the preadolescent sons of high versus midrange versus low-functioning families

Quatman, Teri

1990

Overview

The qualities that comprise optimum family functioning are not necessarily continuous with those that define pathology, yet there exists little research on the definition of \"optimum\" versus pathological family functioning. Study 1 of this two-part work is a prototype study of laymen's perceptions of healthy family functioning. The sample was comprised of 130 parents and guardians of sixth graders from a middle class San Francisco Bay Area school district. Questionnaires were designed to elicit parents' conceptions of optimum healthy family functioning, asking for descriptive phrases about the best real life family they had known. Verbatim responses were broken into sentence or phrase units, then categorized by family subsystem (whole-family, spouse-spouse, parent-child, mother-child, and father-child), and finally sorted into content categories. The most frequently endorsed categories across all subsystems were Emotional Bondedness, Commonness/Mutuality, and Communication. A content analysis revealed specific family features most valued to be: expressive communication, time together, and love. Results were discussed in terms of both convergence with and divergence from the common notions of family health held in the literature reviewed. Family systems' research linking family environment to characteristics of family members has focused on presenting symptoms of \"identified patients.\" Study 2 examined physical, academic, social, and emotional characteristics in \"non-clinical\" sixth grade boys related to the quality of their family environment (high, mid-range or low functioning). Subjects were 109 sixth grade boys (and their families) from two non-contiguous San Francisco Bay Area school districts. Family environment was assessed by means of two structured in-home family interaction tasks, rated for family dynamics and parenting styles. Marital satisfaction was assessed by questionnaire. Measures of sixth grade boys' functioning included ratings of physical symptomatology, academic achievement and motivation, peer social preference, boys' distress (rated by teachers, mothers, fathers, peers, and self), and boys' restraint (rated by the same informants). In general, the quality of family environment had a mild to moderate relationship with boys' physical health, academic achievement and motivation, and social and emotional adjustment. The variance explained was modest (R$\\sp2$'s ranging from.05 to.25), but the effects were consistent across analyses. The addition of parenting styles and of marital satisfaction in regression models did not add incrementally to the variance explained by means of family variables alone.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Educational psychology / Families & family life / Individual & family studies / Personal relationships / Social psychology / Sociology
• ISBN: 9798207200330