Author - Symone Osieko

Donald A. Herrin & Scott D. Wright

ABSTRACT: In this article we attempt an historical overview of the developments and streams of through in ecology and human ecology in order to establish a framework for the study of family life from an ecological perspective. In part two of this paper (to published in the next issue of Family Science Review), we will identify and discuss in more detail the important considerations and constructs of ecology we believe are applicable to the study of family life.

Wesley R. Bur Donald A. Herrin, Randal D. Day, Ivan F. Beutler, & Geoffrey K. Leigh

ABSTRACT: This paper is an attempt to describe several aspects of the epistemologies that are used in the family discipline. It argues that phenomena such as the birth process and generations make the "family realm" unique, and the same way economic, psychic, social, and historical phenomena are unique, and this has allowed scholars in the last four decades to begin developing a family discipline that is as basic or primary as the other social sciences. The four intellectual traditions that have been using these new epistemologies in studying the family are described, and it is suggested that they have constructed more primary explanations than is generally recognized. Several examples of their primary explanations are described, and the paper concludes with some speculations about future possibilities the new epistemologies may make possible.  .

James E. Deal

ABSTRACT: The role of similarity in the mate selection/courtship progress area is examined. A brief history of the use of similarity and the problems associated with its use are discussed, low to modest relations, unusable relations, no clear view of how similarity operates in relationship development. It is proposed that a possible explanation for the problem lies in the ways in which similarity is measured. A comparison of self perceptions is the more dominant assessment technique, but evidence form social interaction theory and the social psychological literature on person perception suggests that such comparisons may be inappropriate. A comparison of self- and other-perceptions may be a more appropriate method of assessment, but has its own problems. The literature in this area is reviewed and directions for future research are suggested.

 Richard C. Endsley, Marilyn R. Bradbard, Greg Lang

ABSTRACT: The present study updates the findings of our previous research that child and family specialists function in virtual isolation from each other (Endsley & Brody, 1981). Examining the parent-child (p-c) relations research published in Child Development and the Journal of Marriage and the Family since 1980, and comparing these data to our earlier findings, we have concluded that child and family specialists still approach the study of p-c relations with substantially different methodologies and subjects. However, concomitant with a dramatic increase in the percentage of p-c studies published in both journals during 85- 86, there are recent signs of rapprochement in the use of more similar research methods and in more frequent cross-journal citations.

David C. Payne

ABSTRACT: "Family Science Undergraduate Programs: Time For A New Approach?," (Brock, 1987) presents a curriculum approach focusing on "skills training" as a solution to the following assumed deficits in Family Science undergraduate programs: a) The lack of a clear-cut occupational identity, b) An insufficient amount of professional training, c) Declining numbers of undergraduate majors, and d) A career path which is not economically competitive. Noting that new approaches  to therapy are assuming forms which focus more on "...prevention services, educational intervention, psychoeducation...", the author suggests that family science departments will benefit from using similar "skill training" emphasis as a new model for curriculum development.

Gregory W. Brock

ABSTRACT: The rejoinder presents the opportunity to reply and reiterate several points from my original statement:
1. Changing the traditional family science curriculum by augmenting what exists is a good strategy, and one that I recommended.
2. The curriculum I proposed includes all of the traditional undergraduate course work plus the addition of professional level skills. Any reference to minimizing course work on theory is a simple misreading of the proposal.
3. Teaching skills to undergraduates was labeled as vocationalism (usually connoting trade skills). The traditional curriculum trains students to become academicians or in the view of many, nothing much at all (avocational pursuit). My proposal seeks to broaden, strengthen, and professionalize the undergraduate degree. Family science undergraduates should learn family theory, human development theory, and the ecological view of human problems experienced today. They also need the professional level skills required to change families and foster optimum human development.
4. The concern expressed about the effects of adopting a professional skills orientation on so called non-intervention faculty is very real. If the number of our majors continues to drop, non-intervention faculty will have few students to teach. Adding skills training of the type I have suggested to some content courses is well within the considerable capacity of existing faculty. We have tended to believe that intervention is the turf of the psychologists and social workers. We must discard that myth, value our expertise, and rightfully assume our role in the academic and professional services communities.

Douglas C. Bachel, James Walters, & David B. Eastwood

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this report is to present guidelines for authors submitting articles to the refereed scholarly journals in the social sciences. The recommendations are based on "collective experience of three editors of such journals and were delivered at a session of the Southeastern Regional Family Economics/Home Management 17th Annual Conference in Athens, Georgia held in February, 1988. The theme of the session was to present guidelines to assist faculty in preparing manuscripts for scholarly journal review. The panel presentation and discussion led to the points outlined below.

NCFR Task Force on the Development of a Family Discipline

ABSTRACT: This paper reviews the historical development of family science. It began as an interdisciplinary area in the early decades of the twentieth century. Several new professions, such as marriage and family therapist and family life educator appeared, and a new disciplinary perspective emerged. The result is that family science is now a large, changing dynamic, complex, and multifaceted field. There are scholars in many disciplines who contribute knowledge from their perspective, and there are also several groups of scholars and practitioners who view the family field as their primary discipline. These complicated patterns make it difficult for new students to understand what the field is, and this paper is an attempt to help them by describing historical and current patterns of scholarship and intervention.

Suzanne K. Steinmetz & Karen F. Stein

ABSTRACT: A typology of diverse family forms, based on past research studies of family functions and structure, is developed to help researchers and theorists organize and classify, family type. The matrix, based upon traditional and emerging family functions and structures, appears superficially to follow the mold of the traditional structural/functional framework with each type of family fitting into one mutually exclusive quadrant. However, unlike earlier applications of structural-functional analysis, this typology of applied to a range of variant family forms instead of treating non-nuclear families as problematic.

Teresa D. Marciano

ABSTRACT:

 Wesley R. Burr, Jay D. Schvaneveldt, George Roleder, & Christina Marshall

ABSTRACT: Considerable data have been gathered on American graduate programs for over five decades, but none of the surveys have included family science programs. This study is an attempt to begin correcting this deficiency. The data reported here are from anonymously completed questionnaires from 55 professionals who were interviewed as part of a fact finding tour of family science programs. The sample is therefore small and accidental, but eve with these limitations, if appropriate care is taken in how findings are used, the data are better than the previous condition of no data at all.

Gregory W. Brock

ABSTRACT: Valid, reliable program admission criteria and applicant screening procedures are important to high quality graduate training of any kind. This need is perhaps more pronounced among disciplines such as family therapy where faculty-student contact is highly intimate over a long time period. Clinical training also demands students who serve clients in a responsible and ethical  manner. Once in place, however, program admission criteria and the procedures used to screen applicants are seldom examined. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the admission criteria and screening procedures used in an accredited family therapy degree program. Our intent in communicating the the results is threefold: to describe admission criteria and procedures used in one program, to provide a model of evaluation perhaps useful to other programs, and to show how such an evaluation can change admission criteria and procedures.

Patrick C. Mckenry & Sharon J. Price

ABSTRACT: Harold Christensen wrote in 1964 that family research was a difficult undertaking because of the inability of scholars to put aside their strong values about family living and their own family experience for the sake of objective social science research. The literature in family science has more than tripled since Christensen made this statement, and we're now talking about  distinct knowledge base in family study, i.e. family "science." Yet we would contend that not only is family research still difficult to conduct, but that it suffers qualitatively as a result of persisting personal and even political bias in the formulation of research problems and the interpretation of research findings.

Ad-Hoc Family Discipline Section Publication Committee

ABSTRACT: The first issue of Family Science Review was published in November, 1987. At the time the decision was made to print the first issue, it was believed by  the leaders of the family discipline section of the National Council on Family Relations that enough "guidelines" had been provided that it had permission to publish FSR. Discussions prior to and during the annual meeting in Atlanta, however, revealed there were several misunderstandings, and a number of issues and procedural matters had not been dealt with adequately. The result is that FSR has become an ongoing periodical, but it does not have endorsement of NCFR and is separate publication. In fact, currently, FSR is a publication independent of any professional organization.

Pamela A. Moore

ABSTRACT: Family scientists are beginning to recognize that any career options are available to them. Ours is relatively new discipline, and our past efforts were focused on developing a sense of identity as a profession. We could hardly prepare students for alternative careers until there were enough scholars and professors to handle the academic training of family scientists. Now, we are approaching the saturation point for academic positions. In a 1987 survey of all student members of the National Council on Family Relations, nearly 40% of respondents indicated that they expected to practice family science in an academic setting. It is my opinion that our academic job market simply cannot absorb so many new professors. It is time for faculty members and students to consider, prepare for, and even create new opportunities for family scientists. This essay will describe one such career, that of the legislative research analysts.

William H. Meredith, Larry D. Kallemeyn, & Pauline D. Zeece

ABSTRACT: In a cooperative arrangement between a private foundation and a university academic department, the Human Development and the Family Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for the past one and half years to provide managerial and professional services for the Cedars Home for Children in Lincoln, Nebraska. the Cedars Home has served as an excellent training facility for undergraduate and graduate students in the department. To our knowledge this arrangement is the only one of its kind in the United States where a university academic department runs a licensed private family and child service agency.

Wesley R. Burr and Timothy A. Lowe

ABSTRACT: This paper reviews the literature about Olson's Circumplex model, and attempts to resolve two problems that have been discovered by attempts to use the model. The two problems are that: (1) the model theorizes that the relationships in it are curvilinear, but some data and some other theorizing suggest that at least on of the relationships is linear; and (2) the role of communication in the model is problematic. This paper proposes that the solution to the controversy about the shape of the relationships is that the relationships probably have a different shape than previously thought. The solution to the problem of communication being generally excluded from the model about the three factors in the model. Moving to a profile system also makes it easy to expand the model to include other factors, and one way of expanding it is presented.

Patricia A. H. Dyk and Jay D. Schvanevldt

ABSTRACT: With the increased interest in stress theory, "coping" has become a popular concept in family science. Most studies have focused on individual coping behavior of family members as they deal with stressful situations ranging from normal to catastrophic. However, there is an increasing need to understand how families cope as groups. To date, there has not been an in-depth discussion or clarification of coping as a family-level construct. By reviewing the development of the concept of coping to its integration into current family studies and theory building efforts, this paper enhances clarification of family coping with encouragement that future research efforts be directed toward increased understanding of this complex, multi-dimensional concept.

Erik E. Filsinger and Mark W. Roosa

ABSTRACT: Distinctions among types of explanations of research findings are made. Four types are identified: Sticking with the data, substantiated speculation. Using a sample of 82 articles from the 1960, 1970, and 1980 issues of the Journal of Marriage and the Family, the authors found that unsubstantiated speculation is the norm in family science and that its usage has not changed over time.

Task Force on the Development of a Family Discipline

ABSTRACT: In 1981 there were 51 universities that offered a masters or doctoral degree in a family department (Burr & Leigh, 1982,). However, there was little consensus about what to name these programs. This can be illustrated by the following partial listing of the names that were  used: family development, family ecology, family economics, family education, family environment, family interaction, family life, family living, family relation(ships), family resources, family science, family services, family social science, family studies, family therapy, and "the family."

William H. Meredith, Douglas A. Abbott, and Mary Ann Lamanna

ABSTRACT: The testing of family theory and the generation of new concept and information is of considerable importance to our profession and to our society. Thus, research, which is the vehicle for accomplishing these task, is an important component of any academic department's research strength is the number of professional publications. For this reason a study was undertaken of the publications frequently used by family researchers in order to determine which academic departments made major contributions to the field of family studies. This was determined by counting publications in selected journals fir the period 1980-1986.

Randal D. Day, Gary W. Peterson, and George T. Roleder

ABSTRACT: This paper is an attempt to illuminate several ideas about professional networks in family science programs. Data were gathered from faculty in a number of family science departments as part of a survey of prominent programs. It was discovered that there were few chairpersons or mentors who could be identified as having leadership for a large proportion of professionals in the field. instead, faculty members seemed to have been trained by a wide variety of individuals. Based on the connective hiring patterns of prominent family science programs, suggestions. Several implications suggested for students considering different doctoral programs in family science.

Randal D. Day

ABSTRACT: One of the initial purposes of creating the Family Science Review was to provide an outlet for critical essay and dialogue about issues that emerge in the field of family science. It is the feeling of the editors of this publication will be an important way to enhance the growth and development of the discipline. The Forum section will provide an outlet for such exchange.

Gregory W. Brock

ABSTRACT: The variability of undergraduate family science programs is of concern throughout higher education. Casual observation shows that the number of majors in many programs is decreasing. With this decline, faculty allocations to family science departments are being withdrawn along with other resources. Some universities no longer have a family science program or department. Other disciplines in the social sciences with student credit hour problems are stepping up turf-raiding efforts. All the social sciences are under stress. Times are hard!