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When is conflict useful? : reassessing conflict in the lives of adolscents and their families

The study sought to examine tactics used in family conflict and the relationship between
these tactics and measures of self esteem and cognitive development. One of the
questions which flow from this analysis is whether there is a safe level of conflict which is
related to higher levels of cognitive development and/or self esteem or does any level of
conflict have a negative effect on these aspects.
Subjects consisted of 251 year nine and ten students from a Canberra Catholic high
school. Using Straus's (1979) Conflict Tactics Scale for various family dyads, measures
of Piaget's stages of cognitive development, and Rosenberg's Self-esteem Scale (1965),
no significant differences were found between cognitive development and conflict tactics,
self esteem or gender. Adolescents from violent families had lower self-esteem than those
from non-violent families, however verbal aggression was very common and the sole use
of reasoning was atypical.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218882
Date January 1995
Creatorsde Souza, Susan, n/a
PublisherUniversity of Canberra. Education
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Rights), Copyright Susan de Souza

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