Whither Famology? Department Name Trends Across Four Decades

Three decades ago, Burr and Leigh (1983) attempted to address the ''identity problem'' that the family field was experiencing. They proposed that common terminology be used to establish the identity and facilitate the development of the family field. Using some compelling arguments and survey results, they concluded that the family discipline should be labeled famology. Academic units would use the name Department of Famology and those who work in the field of famology would be known as famologists. These labels were not adopted; no department names have ever included the term famology and no scholars in the family field describe themselves as famologists. Burr and Leigh found that family studies and family science were the two most preferred names among 334 colleagues surveyed and concluded that family science was the better of the two because family studies ''cannot be used to describe the professional identity of scholars in the field. It does not make sense to be a 'Family Studiesist' or 'Family Studiest''' (p. 474). Subsequently, the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) formed a Task Force on the Development of the Family Discipline, which ultimately led to adoption of the term family science ''to refer to the field of study where the primary goals are the discovery, verification and application of knowledge about the family'' (Leigh,1985b,p.15).Administratorsandfaculty members were encouraged to change course, major, and department names to align with this preferred terminology.Burr and Leigh (1983) argued that the incon- sistency in how departments are named within the family field is perhaps a partial cause and is certainly a symptom of the identity problem. Using the 1982 edition of Guide to Graduate Family Programs (Love, 1982), Burr and Leigh found that the 51 departments identified by Love as offering a graduate program in the family field were known by 36 different department names. The situation does not seem to have improved; the most frequent department name in the family field now is the ''Department of Human Development and Family Studies,'' which com- prises only 11% of departments (Hans, 2013b). By comparison, more than 60% of the depart- ments listed in Graduate Study in Psychology (American Psychological Association, 2011) are called the ''Department of Psychology.'' Consequently, as editor of the three most recent printed editions of Graduate and Undergradu- ate Study in Marriage and Family (Hans, 2002, 2005, 2008) and current editor of the online pro- gram guide on NCFR's website (Hans, 2013b), I envy at the relative simplicity that the editors of comparable guides in sociology and psychology have in locating programs for inclusion in their guides. If we have difficulty locating and labeling ourselves, it seems unrealistic to expect students to find us, scholars in other fields to understand us, and policy makers and lay people to acknowledge us. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine department name trends over nearly four decades and, more broadly, to consider the current state of the identity issue as reflected in department names.METHODS AND RESULTSThe investigation of department name trends began by replicating Burr and Leigh's (1983) approach, using academic units listed in the online program guide available on NCFR's website (Hans, 2013b). The online program guide supplanted the printed version of the guide that was last printed in 2008 under the title Graduate and Undergraduate Study in Marriage and Family (Hans, 2008) and included 300 family-related degree programs at the time of this writing in mid-2013. However, many listings were specific to family-related degree program options housed within larger academic units holding distinctly different disciplinary identities wherein family is not the primary unit of study (e.g., counseling, psychology, sociology), and the listing justly focused only on the relevant program option rather than the academic unit as a whole. …