Darwin L. Thomas

Self-Esteem and Religiosity: An Analysis of Catholic Adolescents from Five Cultures

On the basis of a social contextual model this paper hypothesizes: first, a positive relationship between adolescent self-esteem and religiosity across twelve purposive, middle-class, Catholic, samples from cities in five cultures: New York and St. Paul; Merida, Yucatan; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Seville, Spain; and Bonn, West Germany; and second, on the basis of traditional sex-role theory, a stronger relationship between the two variables is hypothesized for females than for males. The findings yield consistent support for the first hypothesis, and mild support for the second in the Latin samples only. The cross-cultural support for the first is underscored and speculation concerning the apparent contradictory evidence for sex-role theories is offered. The emergence of a Latin/non-Latin dichotomy is discussed. Suggested expansions of the topic include motivational and church-sect issues.

Religion and the Family.

In October 1984 the National Council of Family Relations began a new section on religion. The group of NCFR members committed to furthering the cause of the study of religion and the family met to elect officers and chart their course. The group was told that it was an auspicious moment. First, the future looked bright because the recent interest in the religion and family connection was part of a larger movement within the social sciences of focusing on things religious. Second, the current postpositivist era in the social sciences probably would generate fewer dogmatic statements than had occurred earlier in the sometimes heated dialogue between science and religion. Third, the coming together of researchers, theorists, theologians, and practitioners concerned with the religion and family interface had the potential of producing significant payoffs in societys larger effort to understand the human condition (Thomas and Sommerfeldt, 1984). One irony noticed by the NCFR group was that this was really not a new NCFR section in the sense of creating something that had never existed but rather was new in the sense of resurrecting that which had been born, lived a few short years, and died. In 1952 a religion section in NCFR began holding meetings. That section ended in

Adolescent Self-Esteem: A Multidimensional Perspective:

The study empirically combines two commonly used measures of adolescent self-esteem, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and a modified version of the Osgood Semantic Differential, with special attention focusing on the degree of association between the two measures. A crucial aspect of the study focused upon ascertaining the degree of association between four suggested independent dimensions of self-esteem derived from the two instruments. In addition, the study utilized sex and generation variables in assessing structural equivalence. A stratified random sample of 184 families with adolescents was taken. Self-report data were gathered from this sample. Factor analysis with varimax rotation and the Cronbach Reliability Coefficient were the statistical procedures employed. The findings of the study suggest two important considerations for self-esteem research and application: first, the results indicate that four valid and reliable dimensions of self-esteem can be derived from the two instruments; and second, the dimensions derived demonstrate structural equivalence.

Parental Support, Control and Adolescent Religiosity: An Extension of Previous Research

T his note reports a study based on and extending previous research into the relatively neglected area of socialization and religiosity among adolescents. In a series of studies, Thomas (1971), Weigert (1970) and Gecas (1970, 1971), found consistent relationships between the degree of support, or positive affect, which adolescents report receiving from their parents and a range of dependent variables (e. g., self-esteem, conformity, and religiosity). Although discipline or control from parents was related weakly or not at all to the dependent variables, it was found that the joint effect of control and support produces fairly consistent results. Thus, adolescents receiving a high degree of both support and control tend to have the highest self-esteem, to conform most to parental expectations, and to adhere most strongly to traditional forms of religiosity. Those receiving a low degree of control and support tend to rank lowest on each dependent variable. The second and third rankings usually, though less consistently, followed in the order of high support and low control, and then low support and high control. Of most interest here is that the finding linking religiosity to parental support and control holds for purposive samples of male and female adolescents from three out of four contexts (New York; St. Paul; San Juan, Puerto Rico; but not in Merida, Yucatan); and from preliminary unreported analysis for samples from Seville, Spain; and Bonn, Germany. All of the respondents, however, are Catholic and from relatively large cities. The present research extends the application of the support and control variables to aspects of religiosity for a non-Catholic, small-town sample.

4. Perceived Parent-Child Interaction and Boys' Self-Esteem in Two Cultural Contexts

The problem under consideration in the present paper deals with the relationship between parent-child interaction patterns and the child’s self esteem. The relationship between these variables will be examined in the context of samples drawn from two societies: Saint Paul, Minnesota and San Juan, Puerto Rico.’ It is hoped that a cross-cultural investigation of the effects of parent-child interaction on the child’s self esteem will enable us to make a

The Rise of Family Theory

In 1957, Hill, Katz, and Simpson published a prospectus for an inventory of marriage and family research from 1900 to 1956. A goal of this inventory was “the theoretical organization, where possible, of research findings into a set of interrelated hypotheses and propositions” (p. 89). This article also continued Hill’s earlier work (1951a,b, 1955) of organizing previous research projects by “major conceptual apparatus” (1957, p. 89). Two years later, William J. Goode (1959) published an article on family theory with the subtitle “Horizons in Family Theory.” The content and format of these two articles were dramatically predictive of what was to happen during the 1960s and 1970s in family theory.

Determining Nonequivalent Measurement in Cross-Cultural Family Research.

English and Spanish questionnaires designed to measure family and social-psychological variables were randomly distributed to bilinguals to determine the proportions of items and scales which produced nonequivalent scores after using back translation procedures in the questionnaire construction. The nonequivalent rate for demographic items was below that expected by chance while the nonequivalent rate for family and social psychological items was greater than chance with approximately 25 percent of items and scales producing nonequivalent measures. The data point to the need for cross-cultural family researchers to pretest their instruments on a group of bilinguals and then discard those items and/or scales which produce nonequivalent measures before the research is carried out. This is seen as a necessary step in the research process in order to increase the probability of equivalent measurement across cultures.

Secularization and Religiosity: A Cross-National Study of Catholic Adolescents in Five Societies

This study interprets datafrom twelve purposive samples of male andfemale Catholic adolescents in five societies ordered according to an a priori macro continuum of secularization. Measures of traditional religiosity according to thefive dimensions schema are used to operationalize secularization at the individual level. Results tend to corroborate secularization theorizing, but with important differences, e.g., on the belief and practice dimensions if compared with adult samples and the knowledge and experience dimensions if compared with the a priori continuum. Alongside cross-national variations in the degree of religiosity, a consistent ranking of the associations between pairs of dimensions suggests a similar structure with belief as the keystone within individual religiosity across societies. In light of the similar structure, the weakening of traditional belief in the more modernized societies presages powerful changes in the entire configuration of traditional individual religiosity within Catholicism.

Code Elaboration and Self-Concept States

Summary A study was conducted to explore the relationship between selected aspects of language and the self. The semantic differential and the Twenty Statements Test were administered to high school students in two urban settings. A rationale for using the TST both as a measure of self and as a language task is presented. The results of analysis showed that code elaboration was inversely related to self-esteem and positively related to derogation. These associations are interpreted as a consequence of the type of social interaction made possible by code elaboration.

Sociological theory and the family : The problem of fit between form and content

The generic and perhaps insoluble issue in theorizing is the &dquo;problem of fit&dquo; between man’s symbols, i.e. forms, and the empirical content which he confronts with his manipulative and mensurative instruments of knowing, whether these be his own senses or artifacts such as rulers, scales or descriptive schemas. The problem of fit has recurred recently in many guises : grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967, p. 261, discussing their disagreement with Merton) : mirroring and isomorphism (Coleman, 1964); fallacy of fit between method and model (Riley, 1964); problem of levels of abstraction and the gap between the language of theory and that of measurement (Blalock, 1969; Costner, 1969); and conflict over paradigms (Kuhn, 1970). Philosophers long ago noted that the correspondence between man’s symbols or concepts and reality is the key epistemological issue. The present paper discusses the problem of fit for the theoretical elements of concepts, propositions, deductive inferential forms, and models. This is done by presenting alternative approaches to theory and noting the implications of some of the assumptions involved in each approach. The generic problem of fit is specifically reflected in traditional questions which have arisen concerning each element of theory. In the simplest act of the measurement of a concept or variable, it is the problem of validity, i.e. is the investigator observing and measuring that which he &dquo;intends&dquo; to mea-