The California Family Health Project: I. Introduction and a description of adult health.

Abstract

Little research has addressed patterns of family and health relationships that reflect both the scope and complexity of family life and the breadth and diversity of health. In the first of a series of articles, we describe the California Family Health Project, a study in which four large "domains" of family life (Structure/Organization, World View, Problem Solving, and Emotional Management) were mapped, described, and compared with a large battery of adult health measures. We first present a brief critical overview of the literature on family and health research, then explain our rationale, define our approach to the multivariate analysis of family and health data, and describe our sample of 225 community-based families. To prepare for analyses with the family variables, we next present descriptive data based on separate principal components analysis (PCA) and multidimensional scaling analysis (MDS) of 14 self-reported health scores for husbands and for wives. No grouping or clustering of health variables emerged for either husbands or wives in the PCAs. A two-dimensional MDS analysis for husbands and for wives displayed the health variables in a circular pattern in which no predominant descriptive dimension or group of discrete dimensions emerged. Consequently, we decided that all 14 health scores will be used in the analyses, with the family variables to follow.