Chapter 2

Summary:

The main focus of Chapter 2 revolves around theories, research, and the ethics and politics dealt within family research. When this chapter focused on the different theoretical perspectives on family, it included the structural functionalist, conflict, feminist, ecological, developmental, symbolic interactionist, social exchange, and family systems approach. Each of these examines how the family relates to either the macro or micro setting. As each of these perspectives on the family was discussed in detail, family research methods were also discussed in detail. When collecting data in family research, there are six common methods: surveys, clinical research, field research, secondary analysis, experiment, and evaluation research. Like everything in life, each method has its pros and cons. The chapter also goes in depth with explaining when, where, and why a specific method would be more beneficial in certain situations than others. The final section of this chapter discussed the ethic codes that protect research participants. As Benokraitis highlighted, although most of the violations of ethics codes are unintentional, they affect all families.

What was interesting/what did I learn:

When the Social Exchange Perspective was mentioned, I was intrigued at the discussion of not all of our cost-reward decisions being conscious. It seemed particularly interesting when the specific example was mentioned about how unhappy partners stay together because it seems easier to endure the problems rather than finding solutions which in return creates more issues. Although I understand that it is not a conscious decision I always thought that the rationality behind someone’s behavior would in the end make it a conscious decision. After reading this section, I did realize that it may be because of the lack of a conscious decision that people may not even recognize that they are unhappy. In other words, if someone is not cognizant of the fact that he/she could be happier in a different situation, and that he/she has the ability to change the situation at that specific moment, the social exchange perspective would not be occurring to necessarily benefit that person.

Question:

My main concerns about this chapter involve the ethical aspects of research. Although I feel that it is easier to avoid ethical misconduct in a survey compared to clinical research and field research, I still feel that it is virtually impossible to avoid all ethical implications. Each type of research has its limitations and I feel that to do accurate research you would have to find a way to around that without crossing what is ethically appropriate. How is it possible to record your findings, and even complete the research and study while fully avoiding such things?

Mari-Kathryn Arnold