Family Conversations Research Articles

In Their Own Words: The Reasons Why People Will (Not) Sign an Organ Donor Card

This multisite, qualitative study of 78 family-pair dyads provides rich data on the reasons people cite for (not) wanting to sign an organ donor card in the context of family conversations. In this study, dyads were videotaped as they discussed 8 questions pertaining to their views on organ donation, beginning with the most general opinions and progressing to more detailed questions. Analysis of the transcribed data revealed that the most common reasons for wanting to donate organs were based on religion or a desire to help other people in need. The most common reasons cited for not wanting to donate organs were mistrust (of doctors, hospitals, and the organ allocation system), a belief in a black market for organs in the United States, and deservingness issues (that one's organs would go to someone who brought on his or her own illness, or who could be a “bad person”). One of the most surprising findings is that religion is offered far more often as a rationale for wanting to help sick people through organ donation than it was for not wanting to donate organs. These findings both support and contradict past studies based on quantitative survey data. Implications for the construction of more effective future organ donor campaigns are discussed.

A qualitative examination of home and neighborhood environments for obesity prevention in rural adults

BackgroundThe home and neighborhood environments may be important in obesity prevention by virtue of food availability, food preparation, cues and opportunities for physical activity, and family support. To date, little research has examined how home and neighborhood environments in rural communities may support or hinder healthy eating and physical activity. This paper reports characteristics of rural homes and neighborhoods related to physical activity environments, availability of healthy foods, and family support for physical activity and maintaining an ideal body weight.MethodsIn-depth interviews were conducted with 60 African American and White adults over 50 years of age in two rural counties in Southwest Georgia. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded independently by two members of the research team using standard methods of qualitative analysis. Themes were then identified and data matrices were used to identify patterns by gender or race.ResultsNeighborhood features that supported physical activity were plenty of land, minimal traffic and living in a safe and friendly neighborhood. The major barrier was lack of recreational facilities. The majority of participants were not physically active with their family members due to schedule conflicts and lack of time. Family member-initiated efforts to encourage physical activity met with mixed results, with refusals, procrastination, and increased activity all reported. Participants generally reported it was easy to get healthy foods, although cost barriers and the need to drive to a larger town for a supermarket with good variety were noted as obstacles. Family conversations about weight had occurred for about half of the participants, with reactions ranging from agreement about the need to lose weight to frustration.ConclusionThis study suggests that successful environmental change strategies to promote physical activity and healthy eating in rural neighborhoods may differ from those used in urban neighborhoods. The findings also provide insight into the complexities of family support for physical activity and maintaining a healthy weight. Addressing socio-ecologic factors has the potential to increase healthy behaviors and decrease the prevalence of obesity among rural residents.

Ronald Carl Alan Pearson

Ronald Carl Alan Pearson (“Carl”) encompassed during his medical career a diversity of research, teaching, and clinical experience in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Tanzania. He was born...

Communication Processes That Mediate Family Communication Patterns and Mental Well-Being: A Mean and Covariance Structures Analysis of Young Adults From Divorced and Nondivorced Families

In this study, demand/withdraw patterns and feeling caught were tested as mediators of family communication patterns and young adults' mental well-being. Participants included 567 young adults from divorced and nondivorced families. For young adults in nondivorced families, family conversation orientations had both a positive, direct effect on mental well-being and an indirect effect on well-being through witnessing marital demand/withdraw patterns and feeling caught. For young adults in divorced families, however, conversation orientations had only a direct, positive effect on well-being, whereas conformity orientations had a negative, indirect effect through witnessing demand/withdraw patterns. Interestingly, respondents from divorced families reported more feelings of being caught between their parents, yet such feelings predicted diminished well-being only for respondents from nondivorced families.

From teachers to testers: How parents talk to novice and expert children in a natural history museum

AbstractInformed by literature on childhood expertise in high‐interest topics and parent–child conversation in museum settings, this study explored how children's level of dinosaur expertise influences family learning opportunities in a natural history museum. Interviews identified children with high and low dinosaur knowledge and assigned them to expert and novice groups. Parent surveys revealed that expert children were more likely to have home environments where family members shared interests in dinosaurs and provided a variety of dinosaur learning resources. Analysis of family conversations demonstrated that parents with novice children more actively engaged them in learning conversations than parents with expert children. The implications of this shift in parental engagement are considered in terms of interest and knowledge development in informal settings, highlighting how islands of expertise might facilitate and in some cases hinder learning through shared family activity. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 91:783–804, 2007

Parental Confirmation and Affection as Mediators of Family Communication Patterns and Children's Mental Well-Being

This study examined the extent to which parental confirmation and affection mediate the associations among family communication patterns (i.e., conversation and conformity) and young adult children's mental well-being (i.e., self-esteem, perceived stress, and mental health). Participants included 567 young adult children from both first-marriage and postdivorce families. Results supported most of the hypothesized relationships among family conversation and conformity orientations, parental confirmation and affection, and young adult children's mental health and well-being. No significant differences emerged in the associations among mothers' and fathers' communication behaviors and children's well-being. Finally, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that parental confirmation and affection partially mediates the effects of conversation orientations, and fully mediates the effects of conformity orientations, on young adult children's self-esteem and perceived stress. For mental health symptoms, however, parental confirmation fully mediated the effects of conversation and conformity orientations.

Conventionality in family conversations about everyday objects

Children's developing understanding that words have conventional meanings and objects have conventional functions emerges in parent-child activity and conversation. Drawing on family conversations in everyday settings, the chapter explores an apparent paradox between a global analysis of conventionality as stable shared knowledge and a local notion of conventions as flexibly negotiated in activity.

Exploring College Students' Family Discussions about Organ and Tissue Donation

One hundred fifty-four (154) undergraduate students were asked to discuss organ and tissue donation (OTD) with their families and then report on the conversations. Ninety-four percent of the students discussed OTD with family members during the study. Students more often reported speaking to their mothers (67%) compared to their fathers (26%) about OTD. Family members typically reacted either positively (60%) or neutrally (27%) to the topic of organ and tissue donation. Students reported initiating the conversation by mentioning their participation in this project (39%) or by asking their family member's intentions (34%). Family conversations lasted a median of 12 minutes, and 33% of students reported the family conversation positively affected their attitudes toward OTD. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of students reported the conversation had a positive impact on family's attitudes toward OTD.

Intergenerational Family Conversations and Decision Making about Eating Healthfully

Objective To explore how youth, parents, and grandparents discuss issues related to eating healthfully and unhealthfully and to identify intergenerational strategies for educators to improve this communication. Design In three intergenerational focus groups, each with 4-8 families, a trained moderator asked questions about family practices and conversations for eating healthfully and unhealthfully. Setting Three focus group sites, each with Pennsylvania Nutrition Education Program sites (PANEP) programs serving low-income populations and multigenerational clientele, based in geographically and culturally diverse communities in Pennsylvania. Participants Forty-four individuals (21 pre-teens, 16 parents, and 7 grandparents) from 17 families. Phenomenon of Interest How youth, parents, and grandparents discuss and influence each other’s healthful and unhealthful eating practices. Analysis “Strength” of evidence determined by repetition of ideas across focus groups and from the respondents’ quotes providing in-depth information. Results Families demonstrated a wide range of ways that family communication is associated with the adoption of healthful and unhealthful patterns of eating. Parents and grandparents expressed anguish over their struggle and inability to help their children eat more healthfully. All three generations enumerated strategies for dealing with disagreement. Conclusions and Implications Grandparents, parents and children indicate that they need opportunities to learn together and communicate about ways to improve nutrition behaviors.

Communicative behavior in family conversation: Comparison of amount of talk in Finnish, SwedishFinnish, and Swedish families

The present study is a part of a project aiming at studying whether or not there are differences in the communicative behavior among three Nordic groups: 20 Finnish families in Finland, 20 Finnish families living in Sweden, and 20 Swedish families in Sweden. Families with a 9- to 13-year-old target child were compared with regard to amount of talk during family mealtimes. The Swedish families differed distinctly from the Finnish and SwedishFinnish ones in that they produced more talk. The two latter groups behaved quite similarly even though the SwedishFinnish families had lived in Sweden for 13–25 years. Particular emphasis was placed on studying pauses, which were remarkably shorter and less frequent in the Swedish families. The study showed that the contribution by different family members to conversation was quite similar in all the groups, with a dominance of the mother.

Structural characteristics of proper nouns in Korean-Swedish discourse

This article examines the structural characteristics of proper nouns from other languages, which have been considered to be the most typical borrowings to such an extent that most codeswitching researchers have not made it a subject of discussion at all. The data consist of spontaneous adult, child and family conversations among Koreans residing in Sweden. Linguistic analysis shows that a number of proper nouns attested in the Korean-Swedish data do not behave as borrowings but as codeswitches. They do not show complete morphosyntactic integration into the language of the sentence, yet even so they sometimes include function morphemes such as definite articles. Occasionally the word order of the proper noun (or noun phrase) corresponds to the original language. Taking all of this into account, we can reasonably conclude that even proper nouns, which are generally assumed to be the most typical borrowings by many codeswitching researchers, undergo the same (or at least related) morphosyntactic processes and that they are not different from codeswitching.

Sabor Latino: Bodegas of Aesthetic Ideas

(2006). Sabor Latino: Bodegas of Aesthetic Ideas. Art Education: Vol. 59, Sharing Concerns, Teaming Up, and Reaching Out, pp. 38-45.

The older driver: who is responsible? The state, the doctor, or the older driver?

The physician has a Hobson's choice in deciding if an older driver with problems of normal aging, disease, and medications should continue to drive. Several cases are presented here to illustrate the problem, open dialogue, and present a partial solution. The ability to drive will prevent or delay the onset of maladaptive correlates of aging, namely the loss of independence. In the year 2000, 18.9 million older drivers were licensed, which is an increase of 36% since 1990 (US Department of Transportation 2001). Moreover, there was a 12% increase of the over-65 population within this same time period. It is unknown how many older people lose their licenses due to poor health or are turned in by their physicians for medical reasons, as stipulated by law due to Federal Privacy Laws. Furthermore, information about how many older persons voluntarily give up their licenses is also not known. In view of the increasing number of elderly drivers, one of the largest automobile insurance companies in the US has produced an attractive booklet for discussing “family conversations” with older drivers. This highlights the problem that individuals and families, in most cases, do not stop impaired older drivers from driving. The medical profession needs an outside agency to insulate them from a difficult decision and still fulfill their responsibility to society. Normal aging has a major influence on vision, hearing, reaction time, and mobility. Furthermore, there are a number of common diseases that impact the older driver such as atherosclerosis and all its consequences, hypertension, degenerative joint disease, and diabetes. The geriatric population also takes many drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter, and these have side effects that can influence the ability of the older driver to manage an automobile (Finestone 2003). The reality of aging is that many of the physical and mental skills needed to safely operate a motor vehicle deteriorate. Older drivers have diminished vision, particularly at nighttime, reduced depth perception, greater sensitivity to glaring lights, reduced muscle strength, decreased flexibility of neck and trunk, slower reaction time, and less ability to divide their attention among various tasks, therefore decreasing their ability to make quick judgments. In light of the July 2003 accident in Santa Monica, CA, USA, where an elderly male driver sped down the length of an outdoor market killing 10 out of 50 persons struck by his car, the topic of driving in the elderly has become front-page news. The fatality rate for drivers 85 years and older is nine times that of drivers in the aged 25–69 according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (US Department of Transportation 2001). Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of injury-related deaths for people aged 65–70, again emphasizing the seriousness of this problem (Traffic Safety Facts 2002). The burden of deciding which older person should drive or not drive places a physician in a very difficult situation. Many older drivers almost totally depend on their cars for transportation for medical visits, shopping, religious services, and socialization. Driving affords them a certain amount of independence and is very important for maintaining quality of life. National Patient Privacy laws further add to the complexity of the problem. The following case reports originate from the author's geriatric practice and illustrate some of the problems practicing physicians face. One proposed solution is the use of driving schools, which exist in some states of the US. Such schools may involve a medical referral and allow third-party evaluation of an older person's driving ability and degree of safety (see Appendices 1 and 2). However, there is a cost involved, which could be subsidized by the state or federal government rather than putting the burden on the older driver.

Sociocultural Perspective on Organ and Tissue Donation among Reservation-Dwelling American Indian Adults

Objective To discover the sociocultural patterns that influence decisions about organ and tissue donation among American Indian (AI) adults. Design This qualitative ethnographic study used a social–ecological framework. A snowball sampling technique was used to recruit 21 Oglala Lakota Sioux participants (age ≥ 19 years) living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, USA. Face-to-face interviews were conducted using open-ended questions derived from the social–ecological perspective of Stokols (1992). Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. Data were categorized into construct codes to identify concepts and to discover emerging themes. Results Personal and environmental themes regarding organ and tissue donation emerged. There were two personal themes: uncertain knowledge and the diabetes crisis. Participants knew very little about organ and tissue donation but there was a basic understanding of donor/recipient compatibility. The prevalence of diabetes in the community is contributing to a dire need for kidney donors. The diabetes crisis was acknowledged by every participant. There were three environmental themes: cultural transitions, healthcare system competence and outreach efforts. Traditional cultural beliefs such as entering the spirit world with an intact body were acknowledged. However, conversations reflected re-examination of traditional beliefs because of the need for kidney donors. The healthcare environmental context of organ and tissue donation emerged as a theme. Participants were not confident that the local health system was prepared to either address traditional beliefs about organ and tissue donation or implement a donation protocol. The final theme was the environmental context of outreach efforts. Participants desired relevant outreach targeted to the community and disseminated through local communication networks including the family, the media and tribal leaders. Conclusions Sociocultural factors relevant to the personal and environmental context of the social ecological model influenced beliefs about organ and tissue donation among the Lakota people in this study. Outreach programs aimed at increasing donation need to respect traditional beliefs yet present the choice about organ and tissue donation within the cultural context. Telling the stories of community members affected by both diabetes and donation is important. Promoting family conversation is critical. Healthcare systems must approach potential donor families with an understanding of traditional beliefs and respect for the process of family communication about organ and tissue donation.

Family Communication and Genetic Health: A Research Note

A survey (N = 717) was conducted to explore African Americans (n = 267) and European Americans (n = 450) knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors associated with human genetics and the interplay of family communication on such issues. Responses indicated significant race differences on familial discussions of medical history and familial encouragement to behave in healthy ways. However, there were no race differences on family conversations about genetic or prenatal testing. In addition, results revealed that media exposure was related to families' discussions about human genetics research. The communication privacy management theory (Petronio, 2002) may provide a conceptual framework with which to posit predictors of family communication about heredity and health. Implications of these findings for future family communication about genetics are offered.

From Living to Virtual: Learning from Museum Objects

ABSTRACTInteractive museum exhibits have increasingly placed replicated and virtual objects alongside exhibited authentic objects. Yet little is known about how these three categories of objects impact learning. This study of family learning in a botanical garden specifically focuses on how 12 parent‐child family units used explanations as they engaged with three plant types: living, model, and virtual. Family conversations were videotaped, transcribed, and coded. Findings suggested that: 1) explanations of biological processes were more frequent than other types; 2) model and virtual plants supported more process explanations than did the living plants; 3) the model plant supported more references to school than did the living and virtual plants; and 4) the living plant supported more references to everyday experiences than did the virtual plant.

NARRATIVES OF GRIEVING AFRICAN-AMERICANS ABOUT RACISM IN THE LIVES OF DECEASED FAMILY MEMBERS

ABSTRACT As part of a comprehensive interview study on African-American grief, the authors explored how racism is incorporated into narratives about a deceased family member. To the extent that experiences of racism are pervasive in African-American life and to the extent that narratives about a person who has died generally account for the life experiences, achievements, character, and challenges faced by the deceased, the authors expected narratives about a deceased African-American to deal with the person's encounters with racism. In fact, most of the 26 African-Americans who were interviewed spoke about racism in the life of the deceased. Many talked about racism blocking the deceased from getting ahead occupationally and in other ways and about how the deceased resisted or stood up to racism. Some people spoke about the ways the deceased taught them to deal with racism. The narratives that indicated that the deceased had rarely or ever talked about racism still made clear that the deceased lived in a racist world but chose not to bring racism into family conversation. The findings suggest that a view of African-American grieving that is insensitive to racism in African-American experience may lead to unhelpful grief support or counseling.

The Songmaker's Chair (review)

Reviewed by: The Songmaker's Chair Melani Anae The Songmaker's Chair, a play by Albert Wendt. Directed by Nathaniel Lees, Auckland Theatre Company, Maidment Theater, Auckland, 11-27 September 2003. The world premier of The Songmaker's Chair played to sold-out audiences in September 2003 at the Maidment Theatre in Auckland. In the program, Robert Nash called it an "evocative, delightful work that only New Zealand can produce; a play [End Page 270] that brilliantly celebrates the wonderfully diverse Pacific migration to New Zealand and how it has enriched our cultures."After it was written by Wendt in 1996 , and given two well-received rehearsed readings (the first at Downstage in Wellington in 1997 and the second at the Auckland Writer's Festival in 2001 ), it was totally appropriate that the play was produced by the Auckland Theatre Company as part of the first Auckland Festival. The company's education unit also brought the play alive for local schools by offering an opportunity for secondary drama students from throughout Auckland to experience in-school workshops, matinee performances, and forums. On the surface, the play is about the migrant Peseola family and the problems they face fitting into a new community. But it is much more than that. As Wendt says in the program: "This play began many years ago in Samoa as an image of an old man, my father sitting in his favourite chair beside a large radio: a haunting image that refused to go away! I brought it with me to Auckland in 1988. From that year until I wrote the first full version of the play in 1996 , I saw a lot ofPakeha,Maori andPacific plays —a truly magnificent and dynamic development in our country's theatre that continues today. I acknowledge my debt to such playwrights as Harry Dansey, John Kneubuhl, Selwyn Muru, Vincent O'Sullivan, Briar Grace-Smith, Hone Kouka, Oscar Kightley, Makerita Urale, Toa Fraser, Jacob Rajan, Vilsoni Hereniko, Victoria Kneubuhl and others. I was absolutely taken by those plays—and I learnt much from them. . . . Since I came to Aotearoa in 1952 I have observed and written poetry and fiction about the Samoan and Pacific migrant experience. This play is my latest attempt to encapsulate that and to celebrate the lives of those courageous migrant families who have made Auckland and Aotearoa their home. It is also in gratitude to the tangata whenua who welcomed us into their home. . . . Like the Peseola family, our journeys have been from our ancient atua and pasts to the new fusion and mix and Rap that is now Aotearoa and Auckland. We have added to and continue to change that extraordinary fusion, the heart of which is still Maori and of Moana nui a kiwa [Great seas of the Pacific, or the peoples of the Pacific residing in New Zealand]." The play tells of a Samoan family, Aiga Sa-Peseola, who have been in Auckland since the 1950 s. To survive and adapt to New Zealand, they have over three generations intermarried with Maori and Pakeha and have developed what they refer to as the "Peseola way."Centralto the"Peseola way" is the magnificent Polynesian exploration and settlement of the Pacific and a song-making tradition whichPeseolaOlaga, the patriarch of the family (played by Nathaniel Lees), has inherited from his father. At the heart of the play is the love between Peseola Olaga and his wife Malaga (played by Ana Tuigamala) and how they have struggled to give their children a good life in Aotearoa. Theirs is the Peseola Way: defiant, honest, and unflinching even in the face of death. For one hour and fifty minutes (the play is continuous with no interval) the audience is part of an intimate [End Page 271] journey in which we witness Pese and Malaga in their twilight years, engaging with different family members—sons, daughters, Palagi and Maori in-laws, friends—in what would seem normal aiga (family) conversations and events, often displaying the cross-cultural misunderstandings, confusion, anger, and amusement that surround the tensions and "playing out" of faasamoa (Samoan way of life) in migrant situations. During these (and often accompanied by intellectualized and verbalized thoughts), secrets...

Tri-generational family conversations: communication accommodation and brokering.

Communication between grandparents and grandchildren can be superficial because of insufficient common ground between them. Among Chinese immigrant families in New Zealand, communication is complicated by linguistic mismatches, as grandparents may be proficient only in Chinese and grandchildren in English. To surmount these communication barriers, middle-aged parents (who know the cultures and languages of both grandparents and grandchildren) may play the role of a 'communication broker' to encourage and assist the two generations to conversationally move towards each other. We identified 35 cases (tokens) of brokering in 12 New Zealand Chinese families and found, as hypothesized, that brokering was significantly overrepresented in moderately (compared to high- or low-) acculturated families, and that brokers were mostly middle-aged parents. In the qualitative part of the study, detailed turn-by-turn analyses of brokering were conducted to reveal how brokering was occasioned, its subsequent enactment and eventual outcome. The results extend the understanding of unmediated communication accommodation in dyadic settings to mediated accommodation in group settings wherein a third (and sometimes a fourth) person brokers the accommodation. The resultant framework of brokered accommodation will be useful for research on other group conversations such as those involving a nurse brokering between a doctor and a patient.

Code-Switching in Trigenerational Family Conversations among Chinese Immigrants in New Zealand

This is a study of Chinese-English code-switching (CS) by grandparents, parents, and grandchildren in family conversations. Based on a 30,000-word corpus of New Zealand Chinese family conversations, 1,091 tokens of CS were retrieved and coded as “ betweenturns” CS and “within-turn” CS on the basis of structural form. The results generally supported three hypotheses proposed on the bases of Communication Accommodation Theory and the contrasting bilingual competence across the three generations. Between-turns CS occurred more often than within-turn CS (Hypothesis 1), and the ratio of between- to within-turn CS was higher for grandchildren than for either parents or grandparents (Hypothesis 2a). Parents used more within- than between-turns CS, and their propensity for within-turn CS was significantly greater than that of grandchildren but not of grandparents (partial support for Hypothesis 2b). The interpretive function of CS was then examined to identify tokens of CS that facilitated family members communicating with each other despite language barriers. Parents were found to be the main users of interpretive CS. Four tokens of interpretive CS (from a total of 69) were presented to illustrate the kinds of communication problems that occasioned the use of interpretiveCS, and the turnby-turn dynamics in which the interpretive function was collaboratively enacted.