Family Data from the Youth Connectedness Project

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Family Data from the Youth Connectedness
Project
Jan Pryor Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of
Families - October 2007
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Who completed the survey?

• 1889 parents completed a survey sent home with
  them with the information and consent forms. From
  these, we ascertained that
• 60.9 were first time families (2 biological
  parents in the same household)
• 24 were lone parent households
• 10.9 were stepfamily households
• 3.8 were extended family households.

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Dimensions of family life assessed in the
parents questionnaire

• Family cohesion
• Family identity (how much people feel they belong
  to their family)
• Mutual family activities
• Encouragement of autonomy in children
• Monitoring of childrens activities
• Family conflict levels
• THESE DIMENSIONS WERE ALSO ASSESSED IN THE YOUNG
  PEOPLE

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• DIFFERENCES IN PARENTS AND YOUNG PEOPLES
  PERCEPTIONS OF FAMILY DIMENSIONS
• On all dimensions young people rated them at
  lower levels than parents. I. e.
• Lower autonomy
• Lower cohesion
• Lower sense of identity
• Fewer mutual activities reported by youth
• Less monitoring
• Higher conflict (very small difference)

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• CHANGES WITH AGE
• Young peoples assessments of encouragement of
  autonomy, cohesion, family identity, mutual
  activities, and monitoring all reduced in levels
  with age of young people
• Parents assessments of cohesion, monitoring, and
  mutual activities reduced with age, but not
  conflict, family identity, or autonomy

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• FAMILY STRUCTURE DIFFERENCES
• There were consistent, but very minor differences
  in family variables and wellbeing amongst family
  structural groups.
• Overall, children in intact families and their
  parents reported slightly higher levels on all
  family variables than those in the other groups
  (lone, step, and extended).These differences were
  all positive.
• It is very likely that these explain the small
  differences in outcomes for children in the
  different groups i.e. family processes explain
  differences in outcomes as much as or more than
  family structure.

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IMPORTANCE OF WHOLE-FAMILY VARIABLES

• Whole-family variables such as sense of family
  identity, cohesion, and mutual activities are of
  particular interest since they focus on the
  family as a group rather than on dyadic
  relationships within the family such as
  parent-child relationships.
• We found that cohesion and identity were
  predictive of wellbeing in young people over and
  above the quality of the relationships with
  mothers and fathers, although these relationships
  partially mediated the relationship between
  whole-family variables and overall wellbeing.

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Family cohesion
WELLBEING AND RELATIONSHIPS WITH WHOLE FAMILY
VARIABLES
.22
Family identity
.18
WELLBEING
.13
Ease/confidence With father
.10
Ease/confidence With mother

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Family cohesion
LIFE SATISFACTION AND RELATIONSHIPS WITH WHOLE
FAMILY VARIABLES
.14
Family identity
.24
LIFE SATISFACTION
.12
Ease/confidence With father
.10
Ease/confidence With mother

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• What next?
• Families are invited to repeat the questionnaire
  this year and next year
• We have a great deal more analysis to do
• All our data so far suggest that families are of
  continuing and significant importance to young
  people