This study sought to determine the contributions of college students'
perceptions of family of origin health and self-esteem to their perceptions of the
divorced single mother. It was hypothesized that individuals who hold more positive
views of their family of origin health will also view themselves and, consequently, the
divorced single mother more positively. Participants were 170 college students, 113 of
whom lived only with their biological parents, and 57 of whom lived at sometime in
their lives with a divorced single mother. Four instruments were used to collect the
data, including the Family of Origin Health Scale (Hovestadt et al., 1985), the Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965), the Perception of Divorced Mother Scale (Ganong &
Coleman, 1983), and a demographic questionnaire. A series of hierarchical regression
analyses were used in data analyses. Generally, results indicated that family type
made no major impact on participants' perceptions of the divorced single mother.
Among participants in the biological parent group and the divorced single mother
group, family of origin health significantly predicted more positive perceptions of the
divorced single mother. In this analysis, the regression model for the biological parent
group was significant, while for the divorced single mother group it was not. Self-esteem
was not found to contribute significantly to participants' perceptions of the
divorced single mother, and thus did not mediate the relationship between family of
origin health and perceptions of the divorced single mother. Finally, among the
biological parent group, amount of interaction with single parent families headed by a
divorced single mother significantly predicted more positive perceptions of the
divorced single mother. Among the divorced single mother group, however, amount
of time lived in a single parent family headed by a divorced mother did not
significantly predict their perceptions of the divorced single mother. / Graduation date: 1995
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/35251 |
| Date | 27 October 1994 |
| Creators | Burke, Susan J. |
| Contributors | Sugawara, Alan I. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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