Nowadays, when the number of pressing social problems is on the rise, it is essential to conduct research into how these problems can be solved, through what means, and based on what organizations. Family Life Education Institute is one of the fundamental organizations in the USA that helps families to mend bridges in family relations and provides counseling in difficult life situations. A legitimate research problem starts with sociological research as logically consistent methodological, methodological, organizational, and technical procedures. These procedures set a goal of obtaining reliable information about the phenomena and processes being studied, about trends and contradictions of their development, so that these data can be used in social practice. This research project aims to investigate how counseling helps families overcome contradictions in family life, through what methods, and with what results.
The social problem investigated is a misunderstanding within a family that often leads to divorces, childhood traumas, or the conflict of generations. To better understand the essence of this problem, it is necessary to delineate its subparts. Since family life presupposes interaction among all family members, the first demarcation line will be drawn based on relations that exist within a family, be these relations between a husband and a wife or between parents and children (Sheppard, 2021). The first group of conflicts will include misunderstandings in couples, while the second group would deal with disputes between children and parents.
Social determinism is one of the basic principles of sociology that expresses the universal interrelation and interdependence of social phenomena. The most important characteristic of social determinism is the causal relationship, but all determination forms are not reduced to the latter. Among them, one should mention accidental and necessary connections, direct and indirect connections, etc. The whole set of connections and relationships of this class of objects acts as the most important determinant of development (Tseng & Hsu, 2018). It has two main forms: firstly, it is a strict determination of one social phenomenon by another, and secondly, the concept of ‘social determinism’ refers to the characterization of certain properties or qualities inherent not to an individual subject but a class of objects as a whole.
The determination process presupposes looking for causal relationships between phenomena and explaining why this or that situation leads to corresponding consequences. In this research, the first step of the determination process was finding out what types of misunderstandings occur within families between different age groups. The most common conflicts between husbands and wives include issues as to how to educate children, housing, and money issues. Moreover, time management and job-related issues can become sources of conflict. Between parents and children, educational and upbringing issues come to the fore. Teenagers want to assert themselves and often disregard their parents’ advice.
Secondly, it is essential to determine the reasons behind different family conflicts. To do this, several methods such as surveys, interviews, observation, and interpretation of official statistical data are adopted. Thirdly, appropriate counseling methods should be outlined to be used in different situations. The effectiveness of these methods should be compared against each other, and conclusions should be made as to how to make counseling in family conflicts more effective.
The structure of a specific sociological study represents the unity of empirical and theoretical levels in the cognition of social objects. Without their interrelation, neither the collection of sociological information for its scientific interpretation is possible. The general structure of a particular sociological study can be presented in the form of certain phases, stages, and procedures.
First, there is the preparatory phase, covering the search work, then goes the stage of direct collection of information. The final step includes the processing and analysis of sociological data.
The research process should start with determining the aim and the hypothesis of the research. A theoretical framework should be developed to approach the subject with order and method. To plan for such a research process, theoretical literature in family counseling should be reviewed; basic approaches to family counseling should be outlined. Research methods should be elaborated, be it statistical analysis or observation and actual work. Subdividing family conflicts into smaller groups would be helpful for the analysis as it will allow seeing what approaches are better suited for what kind of conflicts. Comparison of the effectiveness of the selected approaches and providing recommendations would be the final step of the research.
References
Tseng, W. S., & Hsu, J. (2018). Culture and family: Problems and therapy. Routledge.
Sheppard, M. (2021). Social work and social exclusion: The idea of practice. Routledge.
Appendix A
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Appendix B
Demographic Information for Cummings et al. (2002)’s Review
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