The first hour of Wednesday's class will cover assessment of family stress, coping, and related concepts. By assessment (or measurement), we mean developing ways to find out if an individual or family is experiencing small or large amounts of a condition, or is exhibiting small or large amounts of an attitude, trait, or behavior.

Typically, we use questionnaires, with numerical values for the choices (e.g., 1 = strongly disagree/never to 7 = strongly agree/frequently). However, other methods are available, such as behavioral observation or qualitative in-depth interviews. The general page on measurement from my Texas Tech research methods site is available here.

Two important qualities we want to establish for a questionnaire are reliability (results are reproducible and consistent) and validity (measures what it's supposed to measure). My research page on reliability and validity is here.

We will go over several specific measures, some of which are available via the links section.

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The last hour of class will be devoted to discussion of Chapter 1 (also pp. 137-142 of Chapter 6). As the students in "Group A" e-mail in their questions, I will add them below...

Coping and adaptation are two areas of interest pertaining to family stress management mentioned in Chapter 1. According to the book, how are the two similar? Dissimilar? In some families, responses (the coping or adapting) to certain life stresses may result in a higher level of functioning; what might be some examples of this? Are there any examples where the response results in a lower level of functioning?

In relation to the "Sisters" episode we watched in class, what types of resources (the B factor of the ABC-X Model) does Georgie seem to have that will enable her to cope with the stress of her son's struggle with leukemia?

How is it that researchers can look at family stress in terms of the social system?

Why do you think families of ethnic minority are said to have "more elaborate and efficient patterns of social support" (p. 12) ?

Figure 1.1, the ABC-X Model of Family Crisis, shows that stress is the outcome of everything else that's going on. It's interesting to see that everyone has many different things going on in life and yet everyone is affected differently. How are people able to be unaffected by everything around them and others have nervous breakdowns? This question leads to a question regarding the ten dimensions of family stressor events. Most of the dimensions refer to the degree or distinction of how it relates to the crisis. How are the different degrees and distinctions determined? While some people see a type of crisis as nothing or something harmless, others see it as detrimental. At what point is the stressor event so big that it turns into a crisis?

Describe some examples of normative and non-normative stressor events on the family unit.

Boss defines crisis as "a disturbance in equilibirum that is so overwhelming, a pressure that is so severe, or a change that is so acute that the family system is blocked, immobilized, or incapacitated" (p. 14). Adaptation is the desirable outcome of a crisis. Is it possible that a family can reach a crisis state and simply be unable to successfully adapt? In other words, can stresses pile up and lead to crisis after crisis - a sort of downward spiral - and the family become too overwhelmed to adapt and reach a new state of complexity and balance? Or is there a finite limit to what families can handle before forced to adapt?

Not all stressor events are clear cut; therefore, a state of ambiguity arises. Boss addresses two major types of ambiguous loss situations. Describe these situations. This ambiguity creates the most stressful situations that individuals and/or families can experience. Boss blames this high level of stress to five characteristics of such situations. What are the five characteristics?

Note from Dr. Reifman: Pauline Boss's ideas, as summarized in Chapter 1, seem to have sparked some interest. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Minnesota, and here is her webpage.