TSUKAMOTO NAOKO
Japanese journal of psychosomatic medicine, 50(12) 1171-1185, Dec, 2010 Peer-reviewed
For the past few years, the author has seen cases where a psychological approach has been applied to children, and has noted that a significant amount of importance is placed on the continuation of the relationship between husband and wife over children's symptoms, for example, the husband (father) takes the child out to help his wife, and due to his worry over his partner's health, scolds the child rather than caring for its physical symptoms. Then, to place emphasis on providing psychological interview and educational guidance to parents, the author assumed that it is important to comprehend the level of intimacy between husband and wife, and attempted to develop an "intimacy scale of relationship between husband and wife". Subjects: 1. Study 1: A preliminary questionnaire, called the "Draft questionnaire for creating intimacy scale between husband and wife," was given to 100 parents of undergraduate students of T women's university and 100 parents of undergraduate students of M university. The collection rate was 30 percent for each university. "A total of 97 items from 56 parent-related items and 41 child-related items" was created according to the results of study 1. 2. Study 2: Another questionnaire was given to 1000 parents of undergraduate students of T women's university and M university, 100 parents of private-school kindergarten children, 50 parents of outpatient children of Y clinic, 100 parents working at hospitals, 30 parents of public junior high school students, 30 parents of private high school students, 30 parents of outpatient children of H clinic, and 30 parents of pediatric outpatients of a university hospital. The questionnaire was handed out to 1370 parents and the collection rate was 77.4 percent. Among the 1037 returned questionnaires, 650 were valid. More than half were returned blank and discarded. The breakdown of people who provided valid responses was male : 285 male, female : 365. Method: A Promax rotation was performed on the valid 650 responses for "a total of 97 items from 56 parent-relationship items and 41 child-related items". Factors with an eigenvalue of 1 or more, and factor loadings of 0.35 or more were adopted. Four factors were extracted from parent-related items (hereinafter referred to as "P scale") and child-related items (hereinafter referred to as "C scale"), and 31 items from P scale and 25 items from C sale were selected. Results: Factor I of P scale is defined as "dependant couple", factor II "stable couple", factor III "discontent couple", and factor IV "respect couple". Factor I of C scale is defined as "child-oriented couple", the factor II "child-noninterference couple", factor III "child-denying couple", and factor IV "child-distrust couple". The reliability and validity of each factor have been confirmed. Conclusion: From the correlation with the "family function", it is inferred that conventional family functions have changed, and the study suggests that the change can lead to confusion in children.