The purpose of the three studies in this dissertation was to enhance career and technical education in the area of agriculture, business, and family and consumer sciences. This dissertation contains three papers: (1) a Delphi study identifying the purpose, expected outcomes, and methods of documenting preservice teacher early field experience…

People who encounter a foreign culture face many challenges in the process of adjusting and adapting to it. For those who remain in contact with that culture over time, such as study abroad students, the adjustment demands may occur on many different levels. This article focuses on the cognitive level, particularly the students' social…

Research has highlighted the challenges that women face as mature-age students in higher education. The challenges are particularly acute when a woman is the first in her family to go to university. Many women begin their journey as students with considerable self-doubt and lack of confidence. They may also face an ongoing struggle to find a way…

Depression's effects on adolescent functioning and family burden are not well understood; there is also limited understanding of teens' and parents' attitudes and knowledge about depression, how these and other factors influence readiness for treatment, and the barriers to care that teens and their parents encounter. To address these knowledge…

This article shares the Body of Knowledge (BOK) as articulated in the new "Accreditation Documents for Undergraduate Programs in Family and Consumer Sciences" (2010). The purpose of sharing the BOK is to enhance awareness of the current knowledge base of family and consumer sciences (FCS), whether for new or lifelong AAFCS members, those exploring…

Theory and research on emotional labor at work is applied to the study of the work-family interface to explore how emotional experiences in both the work and the family domain relate to the experience of work-family conflict and work-family enrichment, and ultimately attitudinal and health outcomes. Emotional intelligence is also examined as a…

Inquiry into the quality of family life in seventeenth century Dublin is an attempt to understand conditions in the second largest city in the British Isles; further, the era was one of convulsions in the body politic, social, and religious. The Scottish James I and VI (1556 1625) determined that the Irish province closest to Scotland, Ulster,…

Recent years have seen a relative flourishing in the Greek countryside of small women's businesses engaged in the production of local traditional agrofood products for an emerging consumer demand for foods of specific quality. In the present article the central research question may be summarized as: "to what extent do these women perceive…

A substantial body of research has shown that relationship quality tends to be (a) lower among racial and ethnic minorities and (b) higher among more religious persons and among couples in which partners share common religious affiliations, practices, and beliefs. However, few studies have examined the interplay of race or ethnicity and religion…

Research was embarked upon to investigate the role of counselors in promoting sexuality education for in-school adolescents in Nigeria. The respondents were made up of 120 practicing guidance counselors in Enugu State situated in South-East geopolitical zone of Nigeria. They were drawn from both professional and teacher counselors practicing in…

Although intergenerational transmission processes have been studied on various aspects of family life, cross-cultural comparisons have rarely been made. In the present study, the authors examine how intergenerational transmission processes on relationship satisfaction differ between individuals with different gender and cultural identities. A…

Children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often demonstrate problems in their participation in family occupations, such as household tasks, due to their needs for assistance and their behavior. Because participation in household tasks is part of family life and may be one way that families prepare children for adult roles, it…

This paper evaluates a participatory action research (PAR) approach to conducting family research in Ireland. Drawing on PAR methodology it describes how parents of people with intellectual disabilities were recruited and trained to facilitate focus groups of parents in Ireland, in order to create an evidence base to support improved dialogue…

Although much research has documented the benefits to children with autism of early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI), little has focused on the impact of EIBI on families. Using a semi-structured format, we interviewed 53 parents whose children had received 2 years of EIBI to obtain detailed first person accounts of the perceived benefits…

The demographic and social processes of the past 150 years have radically changed the number of parents that children grow up with. This article uses two unique data sets to illustrate long-term changes in the living arrangements of children born between 1850 and 1985 in the Netherlands. Changes are described in terms of whether fathers, mothers,…