Using an indirect measure of family structure, relationships between parents and adolescents were studied in 99 U. S. and 60 Japanese families. As two-person relationships tend toward instability under stress, a third person may be drawn in to stabilize the system. Parents, for example, may avoid the tension in the marital relationship by focusing together on an adolescent's problem, or pull the adolescent into a coalition with one parent. Either way the parents are said to have "triangled" the adolescent. In this study, a relationship is found between parents avoiding tension in their own relationship and their tendency to triangle an adolescent. Triangled daughters, in both cultures, had lower scores on ego development, supporting the hypothesis that such patterns can be detrimental to the adolescent's personal development. The discussion includes comments on cross-cultural research.
To identify the prevalence of ADHD symptoms among non-referred children, parents' ratings based on DSM-III-R criteria for ADHD were obtained for 1022 metropolitan children of ages 4 to 12. The prevalence rates of fourteen behavior items were markedly lower for boys of ages 10-12 than of ages 7-9, and for girls of ages 7-9 than of ages 4-6. 41.5% of the 7.7% subjects meeting ADHD criteria had been identified by their teachers as having problems symptomatic of ADHD, and one third had been reported by their parents as having conduct problems and emotional difficulties. A factor analysis revealed three factors: inattention; hyperactivity; and excessive verbal activities.
Social scientists involved on cross-cultural research face a variety of challenges. This issue is discussed in the context of emic and etic approaches to research. A project illustrating some of these challenges is presented. A projective measure completed by each family as a group was used to capture the experience of family in Japanese and American families. Some culturebased hypotheses were confirmed, and an interesting serendipitous finding was explored in depth by a cross-cultural team. The unexpected finding was that pictures made by Japanese families, compared to those made by American families, were more likely to contain multiple images of the family. Further evaluation showed that the Japanese multiple images were most likely to reflect a textured, non-unitary experience, depicting a variety of contexts. The paper concludes by providing suggestions for enhancing the quality of cross-cultural research.
This study examined the influence of satisfaction from each body part in Japanese female youths on self-esteem and shyness. We hypothesized that body satisfaction in each body part has influence on shyness (social anxiety, social passivity) through self-esteem; and examined the hypothesis using path analysis. As a result, only the body satisfaction of "skin" has been shown to affect shyness and selfesteem. We conclude that body satisfaction especially in "Skin" has important influences on selfesteem and shyness in female youths.
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