From: lucas@utdallas.edu
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 09:59:35 -0600 (CST)
To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
cc: Sociology Graduate Students -- International <socgrad@csf.colorado.edu>
Subject: Re: Help on Social Change
In-Reply-To: <m0w7j4A-003AeFC@layla.aub.edu.lb>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970320093926.23461C-100000@odo.utdallas.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Thu, 20 Mar 1997 mfh00@aub.edu.lb wrote:

> Dear Reader,
> First, let me introduce myself.
> I am a graduate student at the American University of Beirut.  This 
> is my second semester in the program (Masters in Sociology).
> The subject  of my message:
> One of my courses is about social change and developemnt in the 
> Middle East.  Part of the course requirement I am about to conduct a 
> study about the impact of formal education on the life of married 
> couples.  My main hypotheses is the following: I think there is a 
> negative relationship between the number of years spent in formal 
> education after hight school and the experience of tension in the 
> life of the married couple.  The more educated the couple is 
> (basically university),  the more is the likelihood is that the life 
> of the couple will be marked with tension.
> The method I will be using to conduct this study is unstructured 
> interviews with married people who come from the same backround;  
> the questions I will be using are open ended.
> I am seeking help from my teachers.  But I am also wondering if one 
> of you guys could help me .  Right now I am stuck on  how to define 
> tension in the life of a married couple?  I mean,  when talking to 

You should be worried about how to operationalize this.  Tension is not a
negative necessarily, but I think you are actually trying to measure and
unserstand marital satisfaction.  Open ended questions are a very
problematic way to approach this question with any precision.  Reliability
is likely to be low, and validity will be questionable.  I suggest you
construct a questionair of perhaps 25 questions that uses a variant of a
likert scale for response.  That is a scale of 1 - 5 which ranges from
very satisfied to very unsatisfied.  Or it could be some other very xxx -
but you get the picture.  Questions could be general, as in how happy are
you in your marriage.  Or, if your spouse died, would you remarry someone
just like him/her? More specific questions might deal with the way
household decisions are made and the partner's relative agreement that
those are appropriate.  How is the money spent and who makes the decisions
and how happy is the spouse with this arrangement. If you could, you would
want to get some general measure of sexual satisfaction, but your approach
to that needs to be very mindful of the culture you are investigating. 

One of the most useful tools in designing research is conducting the
literature review and seeing what other's have done.  Then you can inform
your research design based upon what was strong or weak in other projects. 
A couple of books that might help you are _The American Couple_ by
Schwartz and Blumenthal (I think) and _Choices and Chances: Sociology for
Everyday Life_ 2ed. By Tepperman and Wilson.  These books do not deal with
the mideast, but the general notions should hold.  They also can provide
additional sources for you.  It would be interesting to see how the
specifics of Lebanese culture - don't forget to ask about one's religion
and perhaps the degree of religiosity - shape the outcomes as compared to
western studies. As for what to research under.  I suggest looking under
marriage and family, or marriage and satisfaction, or you might take the
approach that greatest satisfaction results in divorce, and so research
that angle. 


> somebody what could be the best indirect questions to measure the 
> level of tension,  and if there is tension at all.
> My second problem is the litterature review....I have looked under 
> social change,  education,  family......I found only few general 
> refences.....If somebody of you would know of previous studies like 
> this one....articles.....especially dealing with the Middle 
> East(since my informants are all Lebanese)....I will appreciate your 
> help A LOT! Thank you in advance. Best Regards.
> 

Michael D. Lucas
School of Social Sciences
University of Texas at Dallas
P.O. 830688  Mail Station GR 31
Richardson, Texas 75083-0688

email:	lucas@utdallas.edu
fax: 	(972) 883-2735
voice:	(972) 883-6412 (office)
	(972) 994-9745 (home)