Chapter 2

Summary:

Chapter 2 focuses on mainly the Theoretical perspective on families, and study methods on Families. The theoretical perspective branch off into hierarchical order of perspectives. these include, the structural functionalist, conflict perspective, feminist, ecological, developmental, symbolic interactionist, social exchange, and family systems. The way these different perspectives are broken down are their level of analysis and their respective views on the family. The two different ways these perspectives are analyzed are either micro or macro methods. Some as in the structural functionalist and conflict perspective are both macro analyzed while the symbolic interactionist, social exchange, and family systems are analyzed by micro methods. However, the other three perspectives are analyzed by using both micro and macro techniques. Continuing, there are usually only 6 different ways to conduct family research. These methods are, surveys, which are usually mailed in questionnaires, clinical research, field research which studies families in everyday life, secondary analysis which relies on data collected by someone else, experiments cause and effect scenarios with families in closed settings, and evaluation research which is confronts and deals with certain family problems (i.e, drugs, pregnancy, etc). All of these research methods have pros and cons which mainly focus on bias, cost, effectiveness, and boundary limitations.

What Interested Me:

The way some of the research methods on families are conducted. For example, studying family members in their everyday life then bringing them into a closed setting while testing cause and effect can really show the difference for how certain environments can change people. For example, someones behavior can completely change when put into different scenarios. One can be social and a leader in a work setting but when put into a more stressful situation, that person can alone become isolated and easily controlled. For example, the jail and guard study was a ground breaking experiment for seeing how people interact in different scenarios. Also, for scientists to compile this data ethically and without bias is also an are on intrigue for me.

Question:

What limitations must scientists have to ethically and correctly conduct research on a family? What boundaries must be set by scientist and family to correctly find the issue at hand and must some lines be crossed to compound the necessary research? Moreover, how can a study that doesn't cross the ethical line become ineffective? Could it be due to the certain method used and the bias of the scientist? There must be a way to find a non bias, completely ethical way to conduct a correct study on a family that addresses problems and finds solutions.

Billy Bayer

Studying the Family

Summary:

The beginning of chapter 2 discusses why theories and research are important in our everyday lives.

Here are three main reasons why theories and research are important to us:

1. What we are unaware of can hurt us.

Ex: You have to be careful where you get your self-help information because not everyone who writes that information is not always a professional, and you could be lead astray from the actual truth.

2. Theories and research help us understand who we are, and help us understand our families.

Ex: You have to weed out the myths from actual facts.

3. Research and theories enhance skillful judgment, and give us the ability to understand information that we can communicate with our family.

Ex: With different types of media available for us, facts are stated and they also state what people want to hear at times but they can be inaccurate. Through research they can depict what is fact and fiction.

Chapter 2 also goes into detail on what types of theories are being used to study family behavior and how families develop over time. Details include what roles the husband and wife are suppose to have and how those roles make them a functional or a dysfunctional family, and how families handle different stages and events in their life time.

To put conflict into perspective, there has always been a tension between the wealthy and the not so wealthy because there is not equality from resources to opportunities. A bad economy = cutting back on a multitude of things. Racial discrimination can cause problems by not getting the proper resources such as health care, employment, and type of education.

In chapter 2, on page 40 under Family Research Methods it discusses how questions about family are answered. Some of the family questions that were used on page 40 were:

Why are young adults postponing marriage?

Why have divorce rates recently declined?

In order to answer these questions, social scientists typically use 6 major research methods:

1. Surveys
2. Clinical research
3. Field research
4. Secondary analysis
5. Experiments
6. Evaluation research

(Table 2.2 on page 40 provides a brief description of pros and cons of these 6 data collecting methods)

Interests/ Unusual Items Learned:

I found that the three practical reasons why theories and research are important to be interesting because I was naive in a sense. I never knew certain information such as self-help books could be untrustworthy.

I also learned from the six major research methods. I never knew you could actually get that much information out those 6 different methods of research. In a sense, its kind of dishearting to know in some cases that all of the time and money that is put into these research studies one can still end up with inaccurate information.

Discussion:

I would like to bring up a subject that I find problematic on page 50 of chapter 2. The book briefly goes into detail on how abstinence-only programs don’t work. They also state how teens are uneducated about sex, STD’s, and different forms of birth control. Counselors at some pregnancy resource centers are telling false information to females that have unintentional pregnancies. They are saying abortions raise their chances of getting illnesses such as:

• Breast cancer
• Infertility
• Long-lasting psychological trauma

Most of these pregnancy resource centers are associated with religious anti-abortion groups. In 2002 and 2008 the Bush administration funded 2,000 of these resource centers. With this being said, isn’t their something else that could be done besides lying? Misleading people under circumstances like these only causes more problems in my point of view.


Natalie Sebula