During the last fifty years, family life has noticeably changed in industrialized countries. Among many changes, it appears that there is a shift from a "family dominated" society to a more "individualistic" society where the concept of family loses its importance, family ties weakens, and elders lose their essential roles within the family because the continuity between generations in respect to family traditions and values is stopped. Ethnic-elders have different expectations from their family members based on their ethnic-identity, family values, and the extent of their acculturation. These value differences might also influence the accessibility and provision of psycho-social services. Therefore, the purpose of the present cross-cultural study was to understand and compare different ethnic-elders' expectations from their family members and from psychosocial service providers based on their concept of perception of family values. An instrument was designed for this study implementing a 4 point-scale and vignettes. Data were collected from seniors from South Asian (Sri-Lanka), Korean, Hungarian and Jewish communities and from a group of Social Worker (N = 94). Significant differences were found between group values: overall the Social Worker group was the most individualistic/non-traditional with the Jewish group next; the South Asians and Koreans were the most family-oriented/traditional; and these attitudes were the most different from those of the Social Workers. These particularities have important implications for the delivery of social services.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.32827 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Makkay, Melinda. |
| Contributors | Duder, Sydney (advisor), Lithwick, Maxine (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Social Work (School of Social Work.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001873315, proquestno: MQ79159, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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