Family Functioning

Toward a Better Understanding of How Families Function

Studying how families function poses significant challenges for researchers because so much of what happens in families goes on, literally and figuratively speaking, behind closed doors. To compound this problem, many people are often reluctant to invite social and behavioral scientists into this most intimate of environments. The difficulty for researchers is magnified when the family behavior under study is especially intimate, stigmatized by society, or indicative of significant family problems that members are not especially eager to expose. In short, people do not always tell the truth when being interviewed and do not always act “normal” when being observed.

Investigators interested in how families work, fortunately, have proven to be creative in devising ways to navigate the closed and private nature of [Page 622]family functioning. These research methods for developing a better understanding of family relationships can be broadly divided into studies from an insider perspective or from an outsider perspective. An insider perspective when studying family functioning relies on what family members themselves have to say about how well the family is functioning. An outsider perspective emphasizes what professional observers and analysts have to say about the family after observing the family in action or studying written testimony or test results. Both insider and outsider perspectives have their strengths and weaknesses, and studies marrying the two approaches can yield important findings. In these types of studies, the investigators look closely at what family members themselves have to say about the family, they observe the family in action in a relatively normal environment, and the investigators make their own judgments about the family's functioning, based on professional training and experience.

In the final analysis, families are remarkably difficult to study because of their closed nature and the challenges of obtaining valid data (which actually measures what researchers think they are measuring) and reliable data (which passes the test of being able to stand up over time, even though by nature families are likely to be constantly evolving and changing). These difficulties, fortunately, make the work of family researchers enduringly fascinating.

Conceptual Frameworks for Understanding Family Functioning

Theoreticians, researchers, and practitioners have developed many conceptual frameworks to help us better understand family functioning. Several that are relatively prominent today will be briefly discussed here.