Consensus or Discrepancy? The Importance of Conjugal Pair as Unit of Study
Resource
台灣社會學 (7),89-122
Journal
台灣社會學
Pages
89-122
Date Issued
2004-06
Date
2004-06
Author(s)
Chien, Wen-Yin
Yi, Chin-Chun
DOI
20060927115909164694
Abstract
The question of whether to use conjugal pairs in family studies is necessary in Taiwan is examined. According to 516 randomly selected
couples in the 1994 island-wide study entitled " The Economic Development & Female's Family Status: Family Structure, Female's Employment,
and Family Power Structure in Taiwan", responses to three topics-factual data of the family background, sex-role attitudes, household division of labor & the most important family decision item-were analyzed to determine
the degree of consensus/discrepancy between spouses.
Results show that the greatest degree of discrepancy was for sex-role
attitudes & the least for factual family data. The discrepancy of family factual
information between spouses pointed out that the common practice of
using one spouse's answer in gathering family demographic data has the risk
of data validity. Findings regarding household division of labor & family
decision-making show that discrepant answers exist in all items & vary according
to different items raised. The lower level of spousal consensus regarding
sex-role attitudes was further analyzed. It was shown that couples'
different attitudes significantly affect the satisfaction level toward family
decision-making.
The findings indicate that although the amount of consensus among
couples is generally greater than that of discrepancy, bias still exists if only
answers from one spouse are relied, especially regarding family values and
attitudes. Since conjugal discrepancy has become a feature of Taiwanese
families, it is suggested that future family studies make greater efforts to include
responses from both spouses when studying the marital interaction in
Taiwan.
Subjects
couple data
convergence perspective
divergence perspective
unit of analysis in family study
SDGs
Publisher
臺北市:國立臺灣大學社會系所
Type
journal article
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