FAMILY ORIENTATION AND THE FATHER'S CONCERNS IN HIS WELL CHILDREN'S HEALTH CARE.
Contributors: Columbia University. Teachers College.
Published: 1985
Number of pages: 162
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This exploratory, descriptive investigation provides survey information about the father's health care concerns for his 6 - 10 year old well children and examines the relationship between the father's health care concerns and family orientation.

The sample consisted of 86 volunteer fathers from intact families that lived in New York City and its vicinity. Each participant considered his schoolchild to be well.

A three part instrument was developed to obtain the respondent's demographic data, behavioral and attitudinal components of family orientation, and concerns about his well school age children's health care. To describe the demographic data, frequency and relative frequency distributions were used. For interval data the mean was calculated. Hollingshead's two factor index grouped each respondent according to socioeconomic status.

Family orientation was measured on a Likert type scale. The median was utilized to divide the family behavior orientation and the family attitude orientation groups separately into high and low categories. Concerns were elicited according to their cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domain. Chi square analysis on the frequency distributions and Spearman's rank order correlations for the rank order responses were then calculated to answer the research question.

The findings indicate that the father expresses similar concerns for his children regardless of his score on the family behavior or family attitude orientation scales. In general, fathers' family attitude orientation scores are higher than their family behavior orientation scores. As the literature suggests, ideological social changes precede behavioral shifts. Fathers rely on their wives for health information. Concerns about accident prevention that refer to traffic are salient. "Guidance in getting along with family and friends" is an important parental activity. Although these fathers teach most frequently about the dangers involved of experimenting with "cigarettes" and "alcohol" when instructing their children, hard drugs are their most frequent concerns. Parents may need emotional support, facts, and guidance to help them cope with educating their children about drug abuse. The nurse is ranked eighth of a list of nine items. This demonstrates that these fathers do not perceive the nurse as a health educator.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-03, Section: B, page: 0794.

Thesis (ED.D.)--COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY TEACHERS COLLEGE, 1985.

School code: 0055.