Grounded Theory Methods and Qualitative Family Research

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Contributions of Family Leisure to Family Functioning Among Transracial Adoptive Families

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to examine family leisure behavior among intact families with transracial adoptive children and make comparisons to a broad sample of families with only biological children. The sample consisted of 197 adoptive families. Data were analyzed from a parent, youth, and family perspective. The Family Leisure Activity Profile (FLAP) was used to determine family leisure involvement. FACES II was used to measure family functioning. Findings indicated that measures of family cohesion, family adaptability, and family functioning were higher among the adoptive family sample. Core, balance, and total family leisure involvement were also higher among the adoptive family sample. Multiple regression analyses indicated a positive relationship between family leisure and family functioning among this sample from the parent, youth, and family levels of measurement. Implications for practice and further research are discussed.     

Family Context Therapy: A Model for Family Change*

Starting where family group therapy fails, this article breaks new territory in family context therapy. Consolidating the past 14 years of his work, Dr. Bell sets forth a conceptual program and methods to meet problems that earlier forms of family therapy could not reach. Here he provides a model drawn from studies, theories, and personal experience of organizational patterns, interrelations, and change among community institutions that provide settings for family functioning. His new methods are designed to modify the family environment so as to solve family problems and promote beneficial family growth—a framework that may bring together a broad variety of existing family development approaches.     

Family Structure and Child Well‐being: Integrating Family Complexity

Although children's family lives are diverse, the measurement of children's living arrangements has lagged, focusing on the relationships of children to parents while largely ignoring sibling composition. Using data from the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation (N = 23,985) the authors documented patterns of family complexity among a nationally representative sample of children ages 0–17 living in a range of family structures. They also examined the independent and joint associations of family structure and family complexity on child economic well‐being. Family complexity was independently related to economic disadvantage, namely, a lower income‐to‐needs ratio and a higher likelihood of public assistance receipt. The role of family complexity was partially contingent on family structure, with the positive association between family complexity and receipt of public assistance more pronounced for children in families with 2 married biological parents. This study demonstrates the utility of integrating family structure and family complexity in studies of children's well‐being.     

Exploring the Family Album: Social Class Differences in Images of Family Life*

Based on an analysis of twenty family albums, this study investigates how social class affects the family's portrayal of kin and friendship networks as well as its geographical boundaries. The results suggest the visual collections of middle-class families are more likely to present a kin oriented image of family life, include friends, and portray the family as a system with broad geographical boundaries than those of the working-class. Theoretical and methodological implications of these findings are discussed.     

Biosocial Perspectives on the Family

New theoretical models conceptualize families as systems affected by, and effecting change in, reciprocal influences among social, behavioral, and biological processes. Technological breakthroughs make noninvasive assessment of many biological processes available to family researchers. These theoretical and measurement advances have resulted in significant increases in research on family processes and relationships that integrate knowledge from the fields of behavioral endocrinology, behavior genetics, and, to a lesser degree, evolutionary psychology. This review covers a broad spectrum, including the topics of parenthood, early child development, adolescent and middle child development, parent‐child relations, courtship and mate selection, and the quality and stability of marital and intimate relations. Our intention is to introduce, by example, the relevance of the biosocial approach, encourage family researchers to consider the application of these ideas to their interests, and increase the participation of family researchers in the next generation of studies.     

Has Family Policy Come of Age? A Decade Review of the State of U.S. Family Policy in the 1990s

Family policy has come of age in the 1990s, yet it has not achieved a status commensurate with that of economic or environmental policy. Because family policy has been difficult to define, this review proposes an explicit definition of the term family policy and a companion implicit term, a family perspective in policy making It updates the rationale for family policy, arguing that family commitment at its core is particularly consequential in an individualistic market economy with a small social safety net. It chronicles recent developments including philanthropic commitments, state and federal policy initiatives, and the use of research to inform family policy making. Selected family policy issues including family and work conflict, long-term care, family poverty, and marriage, are overviewed. The paper concludes with developments during the decade in theory, methods, and dissemination that hold the potential for capitalizing on the current popularity of families as a theme in policy making.     

Systemic Task Setting in Family Therapy

The application of tasks to the “whole” family system as a method of restructuring family relationships is considered. The value of the introduction of such tasks is discussed. Systemic tasks are categorized as direct or paradoxical . A formula for the construction of direct tasks is outlined. The review of direct tasks and the introduction of paradoxical tasks are discussed together. It is proposed that the partial or complete failure of direct tasks provides fertile ground for the introduction of paradox. A clinical example, which illustrates the application of direct and paradoxical tasks, is presented.     

Tolstoy and The Heroes of Family Therapy

This paper presents Tolstoy's view of history in ‘War and Peace’ against the background of recent post-modern developments in philosophy and family therapy. Family therapy, like philosophy, is now caught between a modernist and a post-modernist outlook, between ‘systematising’ or traditional scientific tendencies, and ‘edifying’ or literary practices. The former is represented by the idea of the family as a system and the latter in a metaphor of therapy as conversation. It is proposed that the edifying philosopher is sounding very much like the family therapist of the 1990s. Both share a newer metaphor of keeping the conversation going, and the idea that therapy is philosophy and philosophy a therapy. The discussion is grounded in Tolstoy's understanding of heroes in history and some implications for family therapy.     

Mixed Methods Research in Marriage and Family Therapy: A Content Analysis

Considering mixed methods research is gaining reputability in the marriage and family therapy field (Research methods in family therapy, Guilford, 2005), we conducted a mixed methods content analysis to examine the prevalence and quality of published mixed and multimethod research during the past 10 years in eight prominent MFT journals (N = 32). Our purpose was to determine the characteristics of studies that utilized both qualitative and quantitative methods, the themes of the rationales for combining methods, and their respective topics of study. We found 16 mixed methods articles, many of which used surveys and interviews, focused on the process of therapy, and did not discuss their methodology as mixed. We encourage authors of mixed methods studies to explicitly define design types, to establish a clear rationale for the combination of methods, to state how qualitative and quantitative methods and data were mixed, and to use theory effectively.     

Separations: A Personal Account of Bowen Family Systems Theory

This paper is a personal account of my own family of origin research. It explores the impact of separations from parents, nuclear family, and extended family through a Bowen family systems theory perspective using concepts pertaining to Bowen theory such as chronic anxiety, differentiation of self, multigenerational family process, and the emotional system. An outline of the process of doing research in ‘vivo’ with my mother as well as conversations with my supervisor are included. Theoretical differences between individual and system models are discussed. A Bowen theoretical approach to the anxiety of separations is investigated. The efficacy of engaging in family of origin work and the effects of thinking systems is examined in light of how it assisted me to view family members, family system disturbances, and clients’ emotional systems more objectively.     

Children's Family Environments and Intellectual Outcomes During Maternal Incarceration

Despite the dramatic increase in incarcerated mothers that has occurred in the past decades, there is a paucity of family research focusing on the children affected by maternal imprisonment. The present study investigated family environments and intellectual outcomes in 60 children between the ages of 2 and 7 years during their mothers’ incarceration. Multiple methods were used to collect data from children, mothers, and children's nonmaternal caregivers. Results indicated that most children experienced multiple risks across contextual levels. Cumulative caregiver sociodemographic risks predicted children's cognitive abilities, although quality of the home and family environment mediated this relation. Results underscore the importance of children's family environments and highlight the need for increased monitoring, service delivery, and longitudinal research with children of incarcerated mothers and their families.     

My Family through the Lens. Photo Interviews with Children and Sensitive Aspects of Family Life

We elaborate on an aspect of photo interviews with children that has so far not been considered sufficiently: Photographs may encourage children to talk about sensitive aspects of family life. The potential and limitations of this aspect are discussed along the lines of visibility and invisibility. Visualisations support children in verbalising their thoughts, but also stimulate narrations on issues that are not displayed. Data are drawn from interviews with fifty 10‐year‐old children who took photographs in their families, and their parents (n = 71). We conclude that visual methods and their combination with a multiple perspectives approach may generate substantial benefits in childhood and family research.     

Family Sculpture and Relationship Mapping Techniques

An overview is constructed of a substantial array of space and action techniques of broad utility in marriage and family therapy. Family sculpture and a variety of closely related techniques have gained wide acceptance by counselors, therapists, and educators. The roots of these techniques and their basic concepts are traced. A heuristic typology is presented which highlights the essential interrelatedness of diverse methods and lays the foundation for further open-ended innovation by working professionals to develop customized variations especially fitted to their personal style and to the needs of their clients.     

What Novice Family Therapists Experience During a Session… A Qualitative Study of Novice Therapists' Inner Conversations During the Session

“What do novice family therapists experience during a session with a couple or family?” This is the central question in this article. A videotape‐assisted recall procedure was used to study novice family therapists’ inner conversations. The therapists' reflections were analyzed using thematic analysis. This resulted in a coding system that distinguishes four main domains: (a) reflections concerning the self; (b) reflections about the therapy process; (c) reflections on emotions about the family members; and (d) managing the session as well as own emotions. The study furthermore revealed that during a session, novice family therapists experience strong emotions, such as self‐criticism and irritation. Both emotions may encompass dangers, as well as opportunities for the therapeutic alliance and the process.     

Para-Modern Family Therapy: Deconstructing Post-Modernism

As in the arts and humanities and other social sciences, post-modernism is quickly gaining orthodoxy in family therapy. This paper presents a social-realist and deconstructive critique of recent post-modern thought in family therapy. From the perspective of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, it suggests that family therapy is neither modern nor post-modern, but both/and these alternatives, that is, para-modern. In deconstructive thought, philosophical dualities like realism/social constructionism, cybernetic/post-cybernetic, systemic/narrative co-exist in an absurd double logic. Like writers of literature, the para-modern family therapy ‘puts forward’ a theory or method not as an ideology of truth, but as a play of irony. She/he works simultaneously inside and outside family therapy discourse, open to a wide range of images and metaphors.     

Work/Family Policy Stratification: The Examples of Family Support and Family Leave

In the past decade the United States Congress has debated and passed legislative policies concerned with women's work, both in the family and in the labor force. The Family Support Act of 1988 and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 fall into this category of legislative policy. A comparative study of Congressional testimony in each case reveals that these two pieces of legislation are excellent examples of how federal policies—and the debates which fashion these policies—maintain and promote a system of policy stratification that perpetuates differences based on gender, race, class and marital and occupational status.     

Family Microtransitions: An Observational Study

This research aimed to study the processes that take place during family microtransitions, that is, when family members move from an interactive form characterized by specific roles (active or peripheral) to another form that requires a change in these roles. For this purpose, 21 normative triads composed of mother, father, and a 4-year-old child were observed in a laboratory while playing together in a setting where they were asked to change their interactive configuration three times. The data revealed different ways of family functioning in coping with the microtransitions. Two groups emerged from the analysis that presented different characteristics. In particular, the family triads that completed the assigned task showed a significantly higher level of coordination and emotional tuning, a larger number of processes implied in the triadic dynamics, and a greater communicative coherence between the verbal, the expressive, and the corporal channels, compared with the group that did not complete the task.     

Visitation Orders,Family Courts,and Fragile Families

Despite proposals to make parenting time a part of all new child support orders, limited research has examined why some unmarried are more likely than others to establish legal visitation agreements. This mixed‐methods study draws on qualitative data collected from unmarried mothers and fathers living in New York (N = 70) to develop hypotheses about the contexts in which parents set up visitation orders, which are then tested in a large sample of unmarried parents living apart (N = 1,392). Both qualitative and quantitative findings show that disengagement, cooperation, and conflict in the coparenting relationship postseparation influence unmarried parents' decisions about whether to establish a legal visitation agreement. The qualitative data further illustrate how parents' distrust of the court system, preference for informal agreements, and uncertainty about the custody of nonmarital children inform their decisions. The article concludes by considering approaches for helping low‐conflict coparents set up visitation agreements outside of family court.     

Sources of Family Violence

This paper suggests a direction for the exploration of the causes of family violence. Explanatory models offamily violence were considered in this regard, with the recommendation that a multi-determined model should be considered to ensure the most accurate explanation. We suggest that family violence will be best understood and prevented or alleviated, if a model is used that considers the interaction of structural violence and the personality features of all the family members.