This study was conducted to determine the relationship between certain dimensions of family functioning (cohesion, expressiveness, conflict, organization, independence, control, and general family functioning) and family life cycle stages. The Moos Family Environment Scale and the Family Functioning Index were distributed to a non-random sample of 100 intact families, evenly distributed across five family life cycle stages. Multiple Analysis of Variance, Univariate Analysis of Variance, Scheffe and t tests were performed on the means of average family, male and female scores obtained from the two separate questionnaires, yielding three sets of data for each questionnaire. The results of this analysis showed significant differences between certain life stages on three of the dimensions measured (expression, conflict and control). No significant differences across life stages on the means of the remaining three dimensions and one global measure (cohesion, organization, independence and the Family Functioning Index score) were found at the .05 level. A test of gender difference between the scores on all dependent measures found significant differences only in scores for expression in stage I families. It was concluded that there are some dimensions of family functioning which change across the life cycle of families and others which do not. Discussion of the findings focused on the relative health of the subject families and speculation on reasons for the results obtained. Implications were drawn for theory building about healthy families and clinical work with dysfunctional families. Reference is made to possible social or occupational variables which may affect any future research attempts to clarify family functioning differences across family life cycle stages. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-07, Section: B, page: 2264. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_75155 |
| Contributors | BROOME, CHARLES RUSSELL, JR., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 240 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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