Cross-Cultural Research in Family Resilience

Cross-Cultural Research in Family Resilience essay assignment

Cross-Cultural Research in Family Resilience essay assignment

1. Read and then summarize Cohen, Slonim, Finzi, and Leichtentritt’s journal article entitled, “Family Resilience: Israeli Mothers’ Perspectives.” You may use the notes and focus questions below to guide your summary. Once you have summarized the article, provide your informed reaction (i.e., your opinion based on evidence).

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2. Find an additional peer-reviewed journal article that examines family resilience using a cross-cultural perspective, and summarize the findings from that study. Once you have summarized the article, provide your informed reaction (i.e., your opinion based on evidence).

3. Compare and contrast Cohen et al.’s research article with your research article. What similarities did you find? What differences?

Notes for “Family Resilience: Israeli Mothers’ Perspectives”

It is important and helpful to be aware of possible cross-cultural differences when it comes to defining “family resilience.” As you have discovered in previous papers in this course, concepts can have different meanings to different people, depending upon the culture studied. Recall, for example, the problems in generalizing research results gathered from the white, middle-class, majority culture to the urban African American minority culture. The same could be said of generalizing findings from North American cultures to other cultures such as those of the Middle East. Thus, it is important to conduct research that examines specific cultures in order to find similarities and differences among particular concepts, such as “family resilience.” This paper examines what “family resilience” means to a sample of Israeli mothers. When we think of Israel, often visions of war, violence, and political unrest come to mind. But it is important that we appreciate that Israeli citizens also deal with the day-to-day stressors that most of us are familiar with, such as family illnesses and divorce. You will see by the results of this study that Israeli mothers’ concepts of family resilience are actually very similar to North American concepts, suggesting that family resilience is a fairly universal concept.

Another important issue to note is that this study is qualitative in nature. Most studies you have read so far are quantitative. A quantitative study is number-based, such as studies whereby individuals fill out questionnaires, and numerical scores for each questionnaire are generated for each participant. These numbers are then entered into a statistical program and statistical analyses are conducted. A qualitative study, on the other hand, uses methods such as interviews, observations, and case studies to gather detailed data about a particular concept.

This study on Israeli mothers used a semi-structured interview format as well as a small sample size. Leading questions, such as asking the mothers about a recent stressful event, how they interpreted it, and how their family dealt with the stressful event, were part of the interview, along with asking the women to give a general definition of “family resilience.” Much data was generated, as the 15 interviews in this study averaged two hours each. The answers the mothers gave were then analyzed using what is called “grounded theory,” a central component of qualitative analyses. This means that common themes in the women’s answers as they related to family resilience were identified, and categories were created.

The authors of this research article explain the processes involved in analyzing interview data, such as the different types of coding that take place. Researchers often use the themes identified in qualitative analyses to create questionnaires, which can consequently be used in quantitative analyses with a larger sample size. Thus, qualitative studies are often preliminary in nature, providing a basis for the development of quantitative studies.

Focus Questions for Reading

Consider using the following questions to guide your reading and written summary of this article.

1. What were the goals of the present study?

2. Why did the authors choose to interview women from Israel, rather than from another country?

3. What were the five main categories identified that captured the concept of resilience for the Israeli women? Give a brief description of each category in your own words

4. For each category identified in question 3, give an example from the article.

5. What was a limitation of this study? Can you think of any other limitations?