Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1982

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

Robert G. Wahler

Committee Members

Charles P. Cohen, Dennis S. Freeman, Priscilla N. White

Abstract

In this study the patterns of maternal social networks and child cognitive abilities were examined in rural Appalachian families. The families studied were all participating in an intensive program of early childhood intervention, and were mostly of lower socioeconomic status (SES). Previous research has shown patterns of maternal social network to be related to problems of child behavior and maternal functioning. This study proposed and tested the hypothesis that the social network patterns of mothers would be significantly related to the cognitive abilities of their children, as measured by a standardized test. A secondary purpose of the study was to study the maternal social network patterns in this rural population.

The primary hypothesis relating child cognitive abilities to patterns of maternal social network was not supported by the evidence of this study; no significant correlations were found between these two variables. The cognitive test scores of these children approximated a normal distribution and showed little relationship with any of the other variables studied, other than family income and parents' levels of education. The overall pattern of test scores for this sample was noted to be lower than that for the national sample on which the test was standardized; this was attributed primarily to the previously reported correlation between SES and cognitive test scores.

The analysis of the social network patterns of the mothers in this study revealed that these networks tended to be relatively small and tightly knit, with a predominance of kin over friends and others in frequency of contacts. Unlike some urban samples previously noted to have this type of network, these mothers were found to view their networks as generally positive, which suggests some basic differences between these samples in their orientations to their social networks as support systems. This finding also tends to support the importance of kin relations as a central aspect of rural Appalachian culture. Factor analysis of the data on maternal social networks revealed three dis-tinct patterns of interaction, associated with the different relation-ship categories of kin, friend, and other. These factor patterns and their relationships with other variables were also examined.

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