+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Posted Fri, 6 Feb 2009 14:54:06
This message was forwarded through MEDSOCNEWS.
If you wish to make an announcement or publicise
an event then please send the text to:
[log in to unmask]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
*British Sociological Association*
*London Medical Sociology Group Meeting*
*Wednesday 11th February **6pm*
*
*
*Operationalizing family, examples from the Millennium Cohort Study.*
*Linda Panico (*/Department of Epidemiology & Public Health, UCL)/
*Background: *Children from certain family backgrounds, particularly
those living with single parents, have been shown to do less well in a
range of educational, emotional and mental health outcomes throughout
the lifecourse. In these studies, “family” is often considered in a
non-problematized manner with little theoretical grounding, often
limited to the number of parents residing with the child and/or their
marital status. This quantitatively-driven work has largely ignored the
theoretical frameworks available in sociology, and, to a lesser extent,
economics and psychology when defining and exploring “family”. Recent
sociological work by Finch et al has begun to distinguish conceptually
between ‘doing family’ and ‘displaying family’, but as yet there has
been no discussion on how these processes might influence children’s
health and wellbeing.
*Objectives: *This paper critically examines the current quantitative
application of “family” in social sciences, focusing on child health. It
seeks to operationalize the theoretical work developed by sociologists
on defining “family” and describing family processes, and to show how
these concepts can be applied quantitatively.
*Methods: *As an example, longitudinal data from* *the UK Millennium
Cohort Study will be used. The study collected information for 18,000
children born in 2000-2001 at about 9 months of age (sweep 1) and 3 ½
years of age (sweep 2). The study has a rich data set on household
composition, household characteristics (including income, occupational
class, parental education), and family relationships.
*Results*: The relationships between family structure, household
characteristics, non-kin networks and family processes, as well as their
impact on a child health outcome, will be visualized through path
diagrams. Initial results show that single parents are more likely than
those in two-parent households to interact regularly with their own
parents and other non-kin networks. They perform similarly to two-parent
households regarding the process of interacting with the child, however
these interaction do not have as much of an element of “display” as
two-parent households. The importance of socio-economic characteristics
in explaining child health inequalities, above any other psychosocial
measure, will be emphazised.**
*Conclusion: *Quantitative researchers should and can adopt a less
restrictive and more problematized view of “family”. An analytical
framework for the quantitative study of “family” is proposed. It
incorporates family structures, household characteristics, non-household
networks, and family processes. We show that this framework can even be
used in secondary analysis.
*Venue*
King's College London
Franklin Wilkins Building
Room 1.16
Stamford Street
London SE1 8WA
nearest train/tube station: Waterloo
**********************************************************************
1. For general enquires or problems with the list or to CHANGE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS send a message to:
[log in to unmask]
2. To suspend yourself from the list, whilst on leave, for example,
send an email to [log in to unmask] with the following message:
set medsocnews nomail
3. To resume email from the list, send the following message:
set medsocnews mail
4. To leave MedSocNews, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message (leave the subject line blank and do not include a signature):
leave medsocnews
5. To join or subscribe to MedSocNews, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message (leave the subject line blank and do not include a signature):
SUBSCRIBE medsocnews firstname lastname
6. Further information about the medsocnews discussion list (including
list archive and how to subscribe to or leave the list) can be found
at the list web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medsocnews.html
**********************************************************************
|