The proposed project is a continuation of ongoing investigation of adolescent parent relationships within the framework of adolescents thinking about social conventions and the social system for the family, The current project was aimed at furthering understanding of adolescent-parent relationship, including adolescents and parents conceptions of rules, authority relations, personal jurisdiction, and the social organizations and social conventisms of the family to relation to perceptions of adolescent-parent conflict. The proposed project extends this research with a detailed assessment and analysis of family social interaction.
The aims of these analyses are 1) to examine the continuity between individual family members reasoning about issues of family conflict and descriptions of conflict resolution as obtained in the current project and their reasoning and patterns of conflict resolution in actual family social interactions; 2) to assess the effects of adolescents' developmental level of reasoning about social conventions and """"""""enabling"""""""" or """"""""constraining"""""""" parental behaviors on family members' reasoning regarding family disputes, conflict severity, and the extent and type of conflict resolution and 3) to examine the family members conflicting interpretations of family disputes are negotiated through interaction and their implications for conflict resolution and family functioning. Coding schemes derived from current research and seeming from reliable, detailed system for coding family social interactions developed y other investigation will be employed to analyze already-obtained videotapes of family social individual interview with the same subjects. These analyses would contribute both methodologically and conceptually to an understanding of the continuities and discontinuities between individuals perceptions of family social interactions that are related adolescent-parent conflict and adolescent development. The research would be important for charting the normative path of adolescent development, including the factors that promote harmonious family functions or cause conflicts and rebellion and would contribute more generally to the psychology of social and cognitive development.
| Smetana, J G (1989) Adolescents' and parents' reasoning about actual family conflict. Child Dev 60:1052-67 |
| Smetana, J G (1988) Adolescents' and parents' conceptions of parental authority. Child Dev 59:321-35 |
