| The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between several family variables and a student's adjustment to the many aspects of college. The sample consisted of 320 unmarried, full-time undergraduate students between the ages of 17 and 21, and was representative of the sample university's population with regard to gender and race. Family measures that were used as predictor variables were the Parental Attachment Questionnaire, the Self-Report Family Inventory, and the Family of Origin Scale. Outcome variable measures consisted of the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire, the Self-Perception Profile for College Students, the Fear-of-Intimacy Scale, and the Symptom Checklist-90-R. Analyses revealed that for the total sample, the family predictor measures were all positively correlated with the outcome adjustment measures as expected. These findings indicate that appropriate student-parent attachment, competent family functioning, and the presence of both autonomy and intimacy in the family were related positively to satisfactory adaptation to college, good self-perceptions, and healthy psychological functioning for this sample. These relationships were also supported for the female sample group, and for the males with two exceptions. Attachment to parents and intimacy in one's family of origin were not significantly associated with self-perceptions for the male group. When the sample was divided by race, the above relationships between predictor and outcome variables were supported for the White subjects as a group, while competent family functioning was not notably related to healthy psychological functioning for the African-American group. Final analyses conducted on the sample after its division by both gender and race revealed support for all of the relationships between the family variables and the adjustment variables for the White females, some of the relationships for the White and African-American males, and only a few of the relationships for the African-American females. However, the group differences were not numerous, and the uneven sample sizes in the groups could have had a bearing on these results. Furthermore, analyses revealed that social index and family structure were not significantly related to adaptation to college, and healthy student-parent attachment did not show a noteworthy association to SAT or GPA for this sample. |
