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Section One: Family Assessment: History, Theory, And Applications

Family Assessment

In this section a more unified research effort in family assessment is advocated by Dr. Halverson. He urges the constructs most important in the study of families be identified by shifting from the study of isolated components of the family to a more global view of family functioning. There is a lack of attention to the nomological net of constructs. Multi-trait and multi-method analysis is recommended to produce useful information regarding the family.

Dr. Carlson continues this critique by highlighting the influential role of theory in the development and use of family assessment measures and methods. Carlson traces the development …

Title And Contents- Family Assessment, Jane Close Conoley, Linda L. Murphy, Elaine Buterick Werth

Family Assessment

Family Assessment

Content

Preface

SECTION ONE: Family Assessment: History, Theory, and Applications

Measurement Beyond the Individual
Charles F. Halverson

Families as the Focus of Assessment: Theoretical and Practical Issues
Cindy I. Carlson

SECTION TWO: Investigation of Critical Elements of Family Dynamics

Assessing Family Health and Distress: An Intergenerational-Systemic Perspective
James H. Bray

Multicultural Family Assessment
Jane Close Conoley and Lorrie E. Bryant

Sibling Relationships
Michelle C. Schicke

Assessing Marital Quality in Longitudinal and Life Course Studies
David R. Johnson

SECTION THREE: Assessment of Special Challenges Faced by Families

Issues in Measuring the Effects of Divorce on Children
Paul R. Amato …

Family Assessment- Subject Index

Family Assessment

Subject Index (10 pages)

A-W

A

abandonment: 219-220
ABCX model of family stress: 274
academic ability: 206
achievement: 207, 210, 221,225, 227
acculturation: 107, 114, 123
adjusted mean difference: 228
adolescents: 215-216, 220-221
affect: 20, 31, 40, 69, 71, 75, 77, 82-84
affective responsiveness: 77, 86, 92
African Americans: 105-107,109,113- 114
age: 47,82 aggregation: 9,51,54
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): 262
analysis of covariance: 227
anger toward parents: 219-220
antisocial behavior: 235-255
Asian Americans: 105-109, 111, 113, 120
assessment formative: 246-248,253
global: 247 standardized: 262, 264-277
asymptomatic family functioning: 70
attitude: 244-245,247
autonomy: 215
average family functioning: 70

W

well-being: …

1. Measurement Beyond The Individual, Charles F. Halverson

Family Assessment

This chapter has several goals. First, I will briefly review the history of measurement as it applies to family assessment. This history has been recounted by many and is available in many recent publications, so I shall be fairly brief. Second, I will discuss family measurement in terms of important issues still facing the family measurement field-issues that are not, in my opinion, being well addressed at this time. And finally, I will attempt to weave these various threads into some speculations about the future directions that family measurement might (or maybe needs) to take.

I will confine this …

Training Sociologists: Professional Socialization And The Emergence Of Career Aspirations, Bruce Keith, Helen A. Moore

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The individual and departmental factors affecting graduate students' professional socialization were studied by employing data from 309 PhD students in 16 graduate programs in sociology. Using Rosenbaum's tournament model of opportunity structures and aspects of Tinto's model of social psychological integration, this study examines students' access to initial funding, resources in the department, indicators of prior ability, current professional activities, mentoring processes, and social psychological factors for their effects on socialization into the academic profession. Access to initial funding and to mentoring have substantial effects on PhD students' professional socialization, but prove to be less than rational processes in the …

Review Of Vivian Gussin Paley, You Can't Say You Can't Play , Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

You Can't Say You Can't Play recounts a teacher's attempts to undo the habit of exclusion in her kindergarten classroom. In this case, the exclusion that has come to concern her is that which arises when certain children are consistently rejected from entering the other children's play.

Review Of Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, Volume I, By Mary Pickering, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The appearance of a comprehensive biography of Auguste Comte (1798-1857) deserves our alert attention if for no other reason than the ubiquitous citations to his foundational work, Cours de philosophie positive, that fortify the footnotes of virtually every introductory textbook in the discipline of sociology. Without the extraordinary work of English sociologist Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), however, Comte's vision of a systematic, lawful science of society would in all probability remain buried in the encyclopedic French in which it was originally written and published. Martineau, in 1853, published her English translation and condensation of Comte's six-volume opus, and it is …

American Terrorism And The Sociological Imagination In 1995: A Sociologist’S Commentary, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

On Wednesday morning, April 19, 1995, a rented truck parked purposefully near the entrance to the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, exploded with extreme force, killing and wounding hundreds of people, including dozens of youngsters in a day care facility. The lethal explosion directly challenged the sovereignty and legitimacy of the United States government. The nation, our television sets reported, was in shock. How could such a terrible event occur in the United States? The television images, so much like frozen frames from a fantastic made-for-TV action-adventure movie, challenged our sensibilities and stung the national consciousness.

Review Of Never Too Thin, By Eva Szekely, And Anorexia And Bulimia: Anatomy Of A Social Epidemic, By Richard Gordon, Julia Mcquillan

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The two books reviewed seek more than a medical or a psychological understanding of the recent increase in eating disorders. Clinical psychologist Richard Gordon (1990) titles his work Anorexia and Bulimia: The Anatomy of a Social Epidemic and uses anthropologist George Devereux’s eating disorder concept as his primary analytic tool. In Never Too Thin, Eva Szekely, also a clinical psychologist, conveys a different understanding of the concept of social, which does not separate it from the concept of individual. She understands the individual and social as coconstituting each other through social relations embedded in individuals’ bodies and shaped by …

Allotment In Severalty On The Northern Ponca Reservation: The Geography Of Disposession, Oliver Raimund Froehling

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In 1890 the Ponca Reservation in Knox and Boyd county was parcelled up and each individual Ponca received a plot of land as his or her own. The remaining 72,000 acres were opened for settlement under the Homestead Act. During the next few decades, most of the remaining Ponca lands held by individuals were sold to non-Indians. When the Ponca were allowed to acquire some tribal lands under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, the land base had already disintegrated. One effect of this disintegrating land base was the increased out-migration of tribal members which eventually led to termination of the …

In Whose Backyard?: Concern About Sitting A Nuclear Waste Facility, Robert D. Benford, Helen A. Moore, J. Allen Williams Jr.

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Proponents of hazardous and nuclear waste depositories label opponents to local siting of such facilities "NIMBYs" (Not In My Backyard). This study assesses the extent to which the NIMBY label and the strategies of industry proponents to reduce opposition function on a reasonable set of assumptions. Using survey data and multiple regression techniques, the levels of concern of residents living in the county selected as the site of a low level radioactive wane disposal facility (imminent threat condition) are compared with a statewide sample (hypothetical threat condition). Consistent with proponents' theoretical assumptions, the levels of concern are greater for respondents …

Review Of The Origins Of Agriculture And Settled Life By Richard S. Macneish. Norman And London: University Of Oklahoma Press, 1992. 433 Pages., Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Excerpt:

Following a brief review of the "environmentalist's" (e. g., Ratzel, de Candolle, Childe, Braidwood, and Flannery) and the "materialist's" (e. g., Marx, Vavilov, D. Harris, Binford, and Cohen) accounts, MacNeish presents his "trilinear theory." It consists of "three hypothetical models and three hypotheticaI sets of causes" for the development of plant domestication and sedentism. This "trilinear theory" is a world culture history similar to the multilinear developmental frameworks proposed "by Julian Steward (The Theory of Culture Chtange: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution, 1955). MacNeish's multilinear scheme is cross-cut by three developmental stages, i. e., food collectors, transitional …

The Contexts Of Housework And The Paid Labor Force: Women’S Perceptions Of The Demand Levels Of Their Work, Sheryl J. Grana, Helen A. Moore, Janet K. Wilson, Michelle Miller

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This research explores the work perceptions, both physical and mental, of women. The research finds that women’s perceptions of waged and nonwaged labor differ greatly depending on the work environment. Perceptions of physical demands of waged labor are almost solely dependent on the type of paid labor women engage in. For homeworkers, perceptions of physical labor are influenced primarily by the number of hours invested in housework. The mental demands of waged and nonwaged labor are also perceived differently. Women in the waged economy report significantly higher mental demands than do homeworkers. This too varies across labor segments. The closest …

Review Of Harriet Martineau: First Woman Sociologist, By Susan Hoecker-Drysdale, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Harriet Martineau (1802-76) is one of the most important and least appreciated founders of sociology. The author takes a significant and much-needed step in this lucid introductory biography of Harriet Martineau, from the standpoint of a sociologist. Hoecker Drysdale's decidedly sociological perspective distinguishes this volume from several parallel works that critique Martineau from literary, historical, journalistic, and other angles. With this book, the early woman sociologist whose writing influenced the likes of Edith Abbott, Herbert Spencer, William Sumner, and Lester Ward finally receives a book-length appreciation from a member of the one intellectual discipline that ought long ago to have …

Mentoring, Paradigmatic Change, And Institutional Structure: Charles E. Bessey And The Origins Of The Seminarium Botanicum At The University Of Nebraska, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The Seminarium Botanicum was a student scientific club that originated at the University of Nebraska during the closing years of the nineteenth century under the supportive eye of botanist Charles E. Bessey. The “Sem. Bot.” (as the club was known popularly) provided a mainspring for the paradigmatic development of the American school of plant ecology (Tobey, 1981). Based on archival materials at Harvard University, the State Historical Society of Nebraska, and the universities of Nebraska and Wyoming, this paper identifies the interpersonal dynamics and institutional matrix by means of which the “Sem. Bot.” became a catalyst for intellectual inquiry. The …

Sex, Lies, And Goffman: Embodiment And Fabrication In The Age Of Aids, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The frequently inexorable fatality, pansexual communicability, and lengthy period of asymptomatic latency of HIV combine to form biological realities and ecological dangers that are individually and socially problematic at very deep levels. How can we think sociologically about the AIDS epidemic? Talcott Parsons’ concept of “sick role,”2 a venerable and productive staple of medical sociology, gives us little to work with here, precisely as sexually active, HIV-positive but undiagnosed and asymptomatic persons do not see themselves as “sick.” Nor, importantly, do others, including: sexual intimates, friends, family members, employers, and health professionals. The interpersonal face of HIV is often trusted, …

A Comparison Of Adaptive Strategies And Patterns Of Victimization Among Homeless Adolescents And Adults, Les B. Whitbeck, Ronald L. Simons

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

One hundred and fifty-six homeless adolescents and 319 homeless adults interviewed directly on the streets and in shelters were compared for backgrounds of abuse, adaptations to life on the streets, and rates of criminal victimization when on the streets. Homeless adolescents were more likely to be from abusive family backgrounds, more likely to rely on deviant survival strategies, and more likely to be criminally victimized. A social learning model of adaptation and victimization on the streets was hypothesized. Although the model was supported for both homeless adults and adolescents, it was more strongly supported for adolescents than adults, and for …

Woman As Cat Monster: Sax Rohmer And The Green Eyes Of Bast, Mary Jo Deegan

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Monsters fill our nights with nightmares, cause us to shiver in terror and look over our shoulder when we walk down dark streets. In other words, monsters are fun. Famous monsters are often men of despicable shapes and minds: e.g., Count Dracula, Frankenstein, the mummy whose tomb has been violated, the werewolf, and Mr. Hyde. The world of female monsters, like their female human counterparts, is often populated by women who depend upon men for their status. Dracula picks beautiful women to become his bloody mates, and Frankenstein tries to take a "bride." More frequently, however, women are seen as …

Changes In Extension Educators' Perceptions Of Job Dimensions And Job Satisfaction Following Organizational Restructuring, John W. Furgason

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The literature provides ample evidence that state Extension programs across the country are introducing new or modified program development approaches and reorganized work units as they attempt to remain responsive to the public's educational needs. Implementation of such innovations, in many instances, represents change in Extension agent roles and responsibilities which could be characterized as a redesign of Extension work. Research on the effects of job redesign has consistently found evidence that workers' perceptions of certain core dimensions or characteristics of their jobs influence their satisfaction with that job. Given the changing organizational climate within Extension and the findings of …

Using The Project Approach With Toddlers, Debbie Leekeenan, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

“From the very beginning, curiosity and learning refuse simple and isolated things: they love to find the dimensions and relations of complex situations....” (Malaguzzi, 1987, p.19)

While working with children at a university laboratory school, we have pondered the question of how to develop curriculum for very young children in a meaningful way that emphasizes content as well as process. In general, curriculum for toddlers (ages one through three) involves activity centers that change from day to day. Because toddlers tend to be immersed in the immediate moment and in the process rather than the product of their activity, teachers, …

Behavioral Parent-Teacher Consultation: Conceptual And Research Considerations, Susan M. Sheridan, Thomas R. Kratochwill

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

The importance of involving parents in their children’s education has been documented consistently. Likewise, school psychology as a profession traditionally has recognized the importance of working actively and collaboratively with parents. Little conceptual or empirical work has been reported, however, that links home and school individuals systematically in collaborative problem-solving consultation. Behavioral consultation provides a useful framework for working within and between family and school systems to involve parents and teachers together in cooperative problem-solving, with a focus on the interacting systems in a child’s life. The potential advantages of having both parents and teachers serve as consultees are that …

An Introduction To The Five-Factor Model And Its Applications, Robert R. Mccrae, Oliver P. John

United States Public Health Resources

The five-factor model of personality is a hierarchical organization of personality traits in terms of five basic dimensions: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. Research using both natural language adjectives and theoretically based personality questionnaires supports the comprehensiveness of the model and its applicability across observers and cultures. This article summarizes the history of the model and its supporting evidence; discusses conceptions of the nature of the factors; and outlines an agenda for theorizing about the origins and operation of the factors. We argue that the model should prove useful both for individual assessment and for the elucidation …

The Americanization Of Ritual Culture: The ‘Core Codes’ In American Culture And The Seductive Character Of American ‘Fun.’, Mary Jo Deegan, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Modern life in the USA is driven by four “core codes” of oppression and repression which structure a wide range of cultural patterns, from fleeting, face-to-face interactions to enduring, large scale social institutions. The four codes (sex, class, bureaucratization, and the commodification of time) also give recognizable contours to modern American cultural rituals (participatory as well as media-constructed) and contribute to the seductive character of “fun” which these rituals typically generate. American “fun” provides short-lived, incomplete escapes from mundane routine, and simultaneously strengthens and reproduces the core oppression and repressions of everyday life.

American “fun” provides its consumers with ritual …

Review Of Aspen, A Documentary Film By Frederick Wiseman, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Frederick Wiseman's most recent documentary was heralded in the New York Times (December 29, 1991, pp. 27,36) with considerable fanfare, but for this reviewer Aspen is a sociological disappointment. Wiseman's unusually keen documentary grip on the subtleties and institutional complexities of Western society has momentarily slipped in his presentation of the collage of institutionally disjointed images offered in Aspen. Visually excavating the social nexus of community life as a whole is a worthy objective for filmmakers of Wiseman's stature and experience, but sociology instructors who hope that Aspen might serve as an institutionally sophisticated community study will have to …

The Gunman Downstairs, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

EXACTLY 24 HOURS ago, in this building, nearly two dozen of your fellow students fled from Room 112, downstairs, in mortal terror of being murdered by a classmate in a senior-level actuarial science class. Newspaper accounts of this event present a particularly vivid example of the frame concepts that Erving Goffman explicates in Frame Analysis. In particular, Arthur McElroy’s entrance into Room 112 was a “guided doing” by which he willfully intended to kill at least a few, if not all, of his classmates.

“For a second,” said a student in the class, “I just sat there in a daze.” …

Zami: A Portrait Of An Artist As A Black Lesbian, Barbara Dibernard

Department of English: Faculty Publications

As feminist critics, we cannot continue to ignore differences in race, sexuality, and class when we write about women; we should heed Adrienne Rich's critique of her own earlier work, that she will never again write of the "faceless, raceless, classless category of 'all women.'" Aware that my work will be partial and limited, I would like to explore Audre Lorde's Zami as a portrait of an artist as a black lesbian. In doing so, I hope to suggest areas where we must open up our conception of the female Kunstlerroman so that we are taking account of Lorde's black …

Moral Versus Social-Conventional Reasoning: A Narrative And Cultural Critique, Carol S. Witherell, Carolyn P. Edwards

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Abstract: We suggest in this paper that attempts to segregate social-conventional reasoning from the moral domain may represent an artifactual division, one that ignores major philosophic and psychological traditions and cultural constructs regarding the moral self. We address such issues as the individual, social, and relational dimensions of morality; the cultural context of moral development and behavior; and whether morality is solely a matter of justice, harm and welfare considerations, or concerned as well with culturally variable definitions of the good and the good society, with role obligations, and with caring and affective aspects of human experience. We conclude with …

Roscoe Pound And Academic Community On The Great Plains: The Interactional Origins Of American Sociological Jurisprudence At The University Of Nebraska, 1900-1907, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The turn-of-the-century academic community at the University of Nebraska differed sharply from today's highly stratified, bureaucratized, multiversity setting. The campus, the student body, and the instructional staff were, of course, considerably smaller in number than now. But, beyond this obvious demographic observation, there was a pioneering spirit and a sense of scholarly community that fostered remarkable intellectual creativity. In particular, the Nebraska campus provided the collegial setting from which Roscoe Pound's American version of sociological jurisprudence sprang forth in a resounding critique of the U.S. legal establishment at the 1906 meetings of the American Bar Association (cf., Pound 1906; Harding …

Teaching Sociology: An Approach To Pedagogy, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The central emphasis in my classroom approach, regardless of the substantive content of a given course, is on “learning to think sociologically." Teaching students to think as sociologists is an uphill struggle in this psychologically-oriented culture. Thinking sociologically involves, for most students, the acquisition of a new point of view to which many students are ideologically hostile. This hostility does not emerge fundamentally (although it often appears overtly the case) from the students' location on the political spectrum (i.e., from conservative to liberal), but derives from deeply held (and often conflicting) convictions about the nature of science and religion, freedom …

Toward Rigor In The Undergraduate Sociology Curriculum: Some Thoughts On Change And Innovation, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

CHANGE IS OVERDUE in undergraduate sociology. The present situation is too often dominated by classroom charlatans, textbook sophistry, and mental torpor. In a science which confronts complex intellectual puzzles and deeply problematic social issues, we bore the average student nearly to death, we chase the brightest scholars from our midst, and we reward one-dimensional rote memorizers with good grades and glowing letters of recommendation. Given this stifling state of affairs, a change toward intellectual rigor in the undergraduate curriculum would indeed be a welcome and revolutionary development.

By asking for “rigor,” I do not mean more sociology statistics courses or …