Irina Pang and Dr. Ivan F. Beutler, Psychology

The research I conducted in Switzerland was part of a long-term research program that started at BYU in 1991. The purpose of that research was to learn more about the role of kindness in family systems. Kindness is defined as patterns of charitable and loving interactions. The main theoretical idea of this program is that kindness plays a much more significant role than has been realized in previous family science literature.

In 1992 faculty members of the family science department conducted a pilot study with 850 participants. The data in that project confirmed that kindness was a more powerful variable than other factors that received more attention in the field. The other variables tested were the quality of communication, adaptability and cohesion.

One important finding was that families which were kind to one another but had ineffective communication skills were almost as successful in their family as families with high kindness and high communication skills. Success is rated by the overall quality of family life and the ability to avoid negative outcomes, such as criminal behavior, drug and alcohol abuse. Interestingly, families, which had good communication skills, but were not kind to one another, were most likely to have negative outcomes in their family, even more than families with low kindness and low communication skills. One reason for this finding is that communication can be a two-edged sword: it can help or it can be used destructively. Kindness, therefore, seems to be a better determinant for family quality than communication. Consequently, family scientists, educators, and therapists should focus as much on improving kindness skills as on improving communication skills.

The study which I conducted is a continuation of this research program. The specific objective in my project was to replicate this study in Switzerland. The results of this study provide insight in how the role of kindness varies in different cultures and how the role of kindness interacts differently with other variables in different countries. In addition, the prior studies reliability will gain more international acceptance, if my study shows similar results.

The version of the study I used consisted of 127 statements about different aspects of family life. For example: “Our family laughed together.” The participants rated each of the statements on a scale of 1 (never) to 7 (always). The goal of my project was to gather data from mainly college or university students, since previous literature suggests that young adults observe family interaction patterns more objectively than other family members.

In Switzerland I soon experienced the first challenges of conducting research. As a former student of the University of Bern and as a Swiss citizen I was aware that gathering data from Swiss is not that easy. Nevertheless, I did not realize how difficult it is to receive any personal information from Swiss people. There was a significant difference between Americans willingness to share personal information compared to Swiss’, even though the data was gathered anonymously.

The following example will illustrate my point: After I translated the questionnaire into German I inquired at seven colleges in Switzerland for permission to ask the students to fill out the questionnaire. Each of the directors refused. Some of the reasons were “fear of overwhelming the students,” “entering into the personal sphere of the students, ” or simply “no time.” This was rather disappointing, but there was still some hope. Professor Groner of the University of Bern was willing to support me in my research and arranged a day where I could meet 200 students in a lecture and distribute the survey.

Consequently, a few weeks later I presented the research project as part of a lecture in an auditorium, where those 200 students were present. Excitingly, almost all of the students took a copy of the survey. Nevertheless, the question was, how many of those will be returned to me. My Swiss professor expected a return of only 50 copies, since the participation was voluntarily. It was therefore a positive surprise that 90 of them were returned in the following month.

In addition, 40 surveys were filled out by friends and acquaintances. Approximately 15 of those were answered by recruits of the military of Switzerland, who were all between 19 and 22 years of age. The other 25 questionnaires were filled out by people of different ages and backgrounds from Switzerland. In general, the people, whom I addressed personally were quite curious about a research from the United States. Nevertheless, the return rate of the survey was only about 60%.

Overall, in spite of some obstacles, the research was a rewarding experience. I found it most interesting to not only read about studies conducted, but to be able to conduct research myself and experience success and disappointments, which go hand in hand with any research.

The results of the 130 surveys are now in process of being analyzed and should be available in a few weeks.