Alex Jensen and Dr. Jason S. Carroll, School of Family Life
In the spring and summer of 2007 the Flourishing Families Project collected data from 500 families in the Seattle area. Each family was given extensive questionnaires and video taped discussing various family topics. Out of these 500 families data was collected on roughly 350 marital dyads (around 150 of the families were single parent homes). It was with these couples that we planned to research variables important to positive outcomes. All of our data was coming solely from the questionnaires.
We developed a research question around couple monitoring. More specifically we were interested in the way couples keep track of each other’s activities, spending habits, and friendships. We also wanted to explore the possible benefits of couples monitoring on couple outcomes such as stability and closeness.
My first task was to begin a literature review. We were expecting there to be a dearth of relevant literature and so we spent a little time brainstorming what concepts would be relevant. Even with our brainstorming I had a lot of trouble finding any relevant literature. Dr. Carroll continued to help me brainstorm different ways the literature may have been labeling the couple monitoring concept. While doing this we started working in other areas too.
Dr. Carroll worked with me to teach me more about how to work with statistics. We spent a few hours testing the strength of the questions that each couple answered. It soon became apparent that the fact that I could not find any literature was not going to matter. There were five or six questions in the questionnaire about this topic. We found that statistically about three of them did not fit with the other questions. That was a huge blow to this project. Because of this we decided that we would not be able to produce a research article about couple monitoring.
While we did not continue on couple monitoring we started working on a different project. Dr. Carroll was personally interested in the topic of relational aggression in marriage. Relational aggression is a specific type of hostility where one person seeks to hurt another person through the use of relationships. For example, a husband is upset with his wife and refuses to talk to her. Another example would be if a wife wanted her husband to do something and she withheld love from him until he did what she wanted.
Relational aggression had not previously been studied in marriage. So our project was simply looking to see if it happens, and what it looks like. My role in this project was similar to what we had originally planned with couple monitoring. I soon started working on a literature review with another student. After this we spent hours upon hours meeting with Dr. Carroll and two other professors discussing what we were finding and the findings from our own data. Eventually, I was involved in writing a small portion of the article’s introduction and literature review.
Currently we are in the process of adding the finishing touches to our article about relational aggression in marriage. As it stands our findings are not complete. As the process continues I will be a part of editing and refining the paper. The end result will be to have the article published in a scholarly journal. I will be listed as one of the authors of the article.
My experience in working on this research with Dr. Carroll was priceless. I am currently working on applying to PhD programs with a goal of eventually coming back to BYU to teach and do research. Because of these goals any experience I can gain in doing research and working with the professors in the School of Family Life will help prepare me for my future. I found these particular experiences especially valuable because I got a taste of how research sometimes turns out. Not every time you do a study will your measures turn out how you like. So while our attempts at studying couple monitoring could be seen as a failure, I saw it as a good lesson learned. I also learned a lot about writing literature reviews, and even some things about statistics. I also appreciate Dr. Carroll in having me work with two other professors in his department. It was a great learning experience to sit in meetings with them and see how they worked as a team to complete their research. Overall these experiences will serve me well in preparing for the rest of my career.