s description): This study implements the Experience Sampling Method to collect in situ data on the daily emotions experienced in one-parent families. Parents and adolescents in 55 one-parent families will carry alarm watches and provide reports on their emotions at random times when signalled across two one-week periods. The underling hypothesis is that the well-being of adolescents in one-parent families is affected by the ongoing emotional states of the single parent. Within-family time-lag regression analyses will be employed to test the prediction that negative emotions which parents experience at their jobs or in other situations get carried over into interactions with their adolescent children, and that these negative emotions then get transmitted to the adolescent. Additional analyses will test the expectation that this transmission is related to higher rates of problem behaviors in adolescents. Lastly, the study will evaluate the prediction that this transmission is greatest in families where single-parents experience a large amount of stress, and is least in families where parents are able to use social support, withdrawal, or expressive leisure to curb the propagation of negative emotion.
| Dworkin, J B; Larson, R (2001) Age trends in the experience of family discord in single-mother families across adolescence. J Adolesc 24:529-34 |
