Continued Reliance on One Respondent in Family Decision-Making Studies: A Content Analysis

Abstract

A common practice in studies of conjugal and family decision making is the use and generalization of one family member's responses to describe other family member's attitudes, perceptions, or family-interaction patterns. Response inconsistency is regarded by some as a systematic factor of perceptual difference and by others as a nonsystematic measurement error. A content analysis of research articles (N = 80) published in professional journals is conducted to assess the reliance on one family member for data to be generalized to the conjugal or family unit. Of the journal articles examined, 62.5% use equivalent respondents for data collection, analyses, and conclusions, while 37.5% extend the conclusions beyond the respondent(s) used in data collection. Articles are compared as to type of respondent, data-collection technique, sampling, sample size, statistics used, and unit of analysis of conclusions. Over time (1965-1978) there has been a continued reliance on individual family members for data on conjugal and/or family units.