Family Relations Impact Psychological Well-being across Lifespan (Research Proposal Sample)

Research Proposal
Student Name
PSY326: Research Methods
Prof Name
29th March 2021
Research Proposal
Family Relations Impact Psychological Well-being across Lifespan.
Introduction
The research topic is selected from observation that people who spend time together seem to have unbreakable ties that affect them through life span development. For instance, family ties seem to be more pronounced by time together and shared experiences regardless of the family having blood ties, adopted children, and step children. The family experiences that individuals go through as children affect them significantly as children and throughout life. While much research is available on the effect of family experiences to children, more research is needed to establish the effect in adults and couples.
Research Question: To what extent does an individual’s childhood family relations impact the quality of spousal relationship among middle adulthood couples as recorded by Self-Disclosure Couple Test.
Hypothesis: Relationships in early childhood with close family members such as parents and sibling influence spousal relationship in middle adulthood as indicated by Self-Disclosure Couple Test.
Literature Review
Family systems have a significant impact on an individual’s well-being across lifespan. According to Polenick et al. (2018), parent child relations affects the relationship one will have with their spouse in future. In particular, couples psychological well-being is determine by relationships developed over the years through interaction with the parent. Polenick, et al. (2018), estimated actor-partner interdependence models and used them to evaluate dyadic association and simultaneously controlling for spouse’s marital satisfaction. As such, wives who reported more relationship quality with their parents had experienced elevated depressive symptoms with lower satisfaction with life. Husbands who reported more negative relationships quality with parents also reported lower life satisfaction. These elements affected the spouses where husbands reported lower depressive symptoms and greater life satisfaction if their wives reported positive relationship with parents. Even in cases when husbands reported low quality relationships with parents, they reported more satisfaction with life and low depressive symptoms if the wife reported positive relationships with her parent. Further, children with happy childhood age successfully and vice versa. According to Lee et al. (2015), satisfied childhood relations translates into peaceful aging and psychological well-being. As such, early experiences including cherished, harshly discipled, and ordinary children responded differently in their old age. Cherished children have stronger tendency to social support in midlife compared to the group that was harshly disciplined. Children who go through adversity in a nurturing environment are likely to be supportive to their aging care givers as they tend to maintain supportive relationships in midlife (Lee et al., 2015). Parent-child relationship determine how individuals cope to various changes across lifespan.
In the developmental stages, family well-being should be prioritized over personal well-being. According to Krys et al. (2019), family acts as a support system for an individual. As such, family satisfaction will establish an individual’s psychological and well-being. Improved family relations leads to independent happiness on an individual (Krys et al., 2019). Family relations develop various types of well-being on an individual which include; interdependent happiness, and life satisfaction. The family setting supports individual interdependent happiness and life satisfaction aspects.
Further, family relation adjustments and wellbeing among children contribute to improved psychological stability. According to Andersson (2005), family support and the parent-child relationship are essential during development stages and well-being. As such, the study indicated that child development and lack of parental supports affect a child’s relationships as later stages of development. Some of the changes in behavior resulting from inadequate family and parental support ranged from engaging in substance and drug abuse, legal sanctions, and criminal behavior (Andersson, 2005). Children grow up with support from one of the parents, which affect contact and relationships with peers and the environment. Due to inadequate family and parental support, the children are more likely to be involved in drug and substance abuse, criminal activity, among other deviant behavior. Children in foster homes are more likely to experience unstable psychological well-being due to the nature of their relationships.
Methods
Identifying the Research Design
For this research topic, an ideal research design is descriptive and the researcher will utilize questionnaires to collect data. Specifically, the research tool to be used is a standardized test known as Self-Disclosure Test. The researcher will use the test to formulate a questionnaire sheet and model an open ended format.
Why the Research Design is Appropriate
According to Newman (2016) descriptive research design will help the researcher to collect data about people’s experiences and compare the findings within the sample. Since data from experience is not quantifiable, it is best to apply descriptive methods to perform data analysis. The research design will inform the researcher’s query for various reasons. Some reasons identified by Indu & Vidhukumar (2020) include, the design’s provision to accommodate experience-based responses. Data analysis is the descriptive and allows researcher to qualify information and present in in simple graphical analysis.
The researcher will recruit married couples who live together and are heterosexuals. The inclusion criteria also includes couples within the age bracket of middle adulthood. Couples must have been brought up in a family setting and by a primary care giver. The research will recruit participants as a sample for the study. The participants will be drawn from the couple who seek therapy in the church family support systems. Couples who contact family therapy program are usually given a voluntary opportunity to participate in the Church Couples’ Program. The members of this program will be informed of the research and given an opportunity to enlist as participants. Interested participants will be required to ask the partner’s informed consent for participation. Both genders are eligible to enlist.
The study will recruit 35 couples as participants from the group. The enlisting couple and their partners are enlisted if each has at least one parent alive.
Procedure and Measures
The research procedure ideal for this research include administering a questionnaire in an interview setting. The approach will make use of questionnaires that have adopted and modified the standardized Couples Disclosure Test. The interview will have some features drawn from other tests such as interpersonal communications skills test. The questionnaire will be administered in an interview setting with couples.
Data Analysis
The research will apply a qualitative study analysis. The research used descriptive statistics in data analysis. As such, the analysis will apply descriptive coefficients by summarizing data set from questionnaires. The data will be an illustration of the sample population used for the research. The data set will use measures of variability and measures of central tendency. Measures of variability include skewness, kurtosis, maximum and minimum variables, variance, standard deviation while measures of central tendency are mean, mode and medium. The data will assess how the family relations affect and individual’s psychological well-being such as family setting, childhood relationship, and quality of relationships for couples. Also, the analysis will assess aspects such as couples among gender, and couples in relationships.
In the research, the measures of central tendency will be used to elaborate the data sets in the analysis. On the other hand, measures of variability will elaborate the dispersion of data across the data set. Family relations will be measures against an individual’s psychological well-being to determine the level of satisfactio