Family functioning, cultural orientation, and psychological well-being among university students in Lebanon.
Author: Kazarian SS.
Source:
The Journal of Social Psychology, 145(2), 141-154.
The author examined the relationship between perceived family functioning, the
cultural orientations of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism,
and psychological well-being in a group of 182 university students in Lebanon.
Factor analysis of the present data from the 12-item General Functioning Scale of
the Family Assessment Device (GF-FAD) resulted in the extraction of one general
factor, accounting for 43% of the variance. On the basis of North American cutoff
values, the author found that 60.5% of the university students perceived their
family as healthy and that 39.5% perceived their family as unhealthy. Male
students perceived their families as somewhat more dysfunctional than did female
students. Muslim students perceived their families as more dysfunctional than did
Christian students. As the author expected, family functioning was associated
with the culture-related personality dimension of horizontal collectivism and
with perceived psychological well-being. Overall, the findings supported the
structure and usefulness of the GF-FAD in the Lebanese context and the importance
of viewing family functioning from the perspective of individual cultural
orientation.