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Biomedical subjects

G B Spanier

Publications and source records attributed to G B Spanier.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1981

The changing profile of the American family.

There has been much speculation recently in both the popular and professional literature about the status of the American family. Accounts of family life in the United States are generally pessimistic, focusing on high divorce rates and other indicators of instability. This paper briefly examines the development of research on the family. The state of the contemporary American family is then discussed, pointing especially to indicators both of the family's stability and the family's ill health. Finally, some speculations are presented about future directions for research in the field.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

The measurement of marital quality.

The quality of marital relationships is the most studied topic pertaining to marriage and family life. Moreover, clinicians have become increasingly interested in this variable as divorce rates have climbed and as services for counseling and therapy have become more readily available and more widely accepted. These research and clinical needs necessitate the availability of measures of variables which assess marital quality (e.g., marital adjustment, satisfaction, and happiness). This article discusses the need for such measures, reviews the history of measurements in this area, identifies some conceptual and methodological issues of relevance, and then focuses most specifically on the Dyadic Adjustment Scale developed by Spanier. Some cautions for clinicians are noted, and a discussion of future measurement needs is presented.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1978

Sex education and premarital sexual behavior among American college students.

The relationship between participation in a sex education course in the public schools and premarital sexual behavior is studied using cross-sectional data from a national probability sample of 1177 male and female American college students interviewed in detail about their sexual behavior and sexual socialization experiences. There was no significant difference between the premarital heterosexual involvement of individuals who had attended a sex education course and those who had not. Furthermore, there were no differences between those who received information on birth control or coitus and those who did not. The implications of these findings for sex education programs are discussed and speculations about successful and unsuccessful programs are made.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

Formal and informal sex education as determinants of premarital sexual behavior.

Controversies exist regarding the effects of sex education in the schools and informal sex education obtained from parents, peers, the mass media, and other sources. Similarly, there is widespread interest in premarital sexual behavior, especially its determinants. This study presents several issues reflecting these concerns which have been the subject of much speculation but which have received little attention by researchers. The purpose of this study was to investigate--through the use of respondent reports--how formal and informal sex education influences premarital sexual behavior during college. A national probability sample of 1177 college students was studied using face-to-face interviews with approximately equal numbers of males and females. These interviews, which were conducted for the Institute for Sex Research, included questions about past and present sexual involvement and other attitudinal, behavioral and background variables. Accordingly, the data about sexual behavior and attitudes are based on the interviewees' self-reports. Indices were created which operationalized independent variables such as familial sexual conservatism, exposure to eroticism, perceived sex knowledge, and sexual exposure and assault during childhood and adolescence. Individual items reflecting childhood sex play, masturbation, current religiosity, religiosity while growing up, social class, sources of sex information, sex education in classrooms, and high school and college dating were used. The dependent variable, premarital sociosexual involvement, is a composite measure of incidence and prevalence of premarital heterosexual involvement which meets Guttman scaling criteria. An Automatic Interaction Detector analysis was used to determine the relative influences of reported sexualization variables on premarital sexual behavior. Major findings can be summarized as follows: Heterosexual behavior progresses in stepwise fashion from elementary to advanced levels of involvement, with each level representing a threshold. Reports of current influences and pressures explain more variance in premarital sexual behavior than reports of past informal sexualization influences, which, in turn, explain more variance than reported formal sex-education experiences. Limited success was reported with the use of a four-stage AID analysis which attempted to ascertain whether variables represented in later stages of the sexualization process "mask" the effects of variables in earlier stages and whether a development process can be identified. It may be concluded that these data do not support the belief that exposure to sexuality through formal sex education influences premarital sexual behavior. Informal sex education has significantly more impact on premarital sexual behavior, but there are indications that pressures and experiences confronting young people in a given dating or peer group situation take precedence over all past sexual socialization influences.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1975

Mate swapping: Perceptions, value orientations, and participation in a midwestern community.

This article attempts to illuminate the understanding of swinging, or mate swapping, an increasingly common form of extramarital sexual activity. A theoretical formulation argues that swinging is a form of extramarital sexual activity which serves to define as good and acceptable a behavior that in other forms and in the past has been considered deviant or immoral. A stratified area probability sample of 579 married adults was drawn from a Midwestern community of 40,000. Areas investigated included community knowledge and perception of swinging, values of respondents with regard to participation in and acceptance of swinging, and the incidence of swinging in the community. Most respondents dispproved of mate swapping as well as other forms of extramarital sex. Over half of the respondents knew about mate swapping, although less than 7% of the sample would consider participating. Swinging was found to exist in the community, but less than 2% of the respondents had ever participted. The data analysis is descriptive and exploratory, focusing on social correlates and characterisitics.

Adolescent↗