earticle

영어

The purpose of this study was to determine the factors affecting family strength and therewith, suggest some strategies to improve family strength and welfare. For this purpose, the researcher sampled 208 college students and surveyed them for their perceptions of the concept of family and family strengths. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, as a result of surveying the subjects on their perception of the concept of family, it was found that almost all of them (99%) perceived that ‘a family consists of a couple and their children’ (item 1). The other items regarding the concept of family chosen by the majority of subjects were ‘a couple and adopted child’ (item 3 & item 17), ‘a remarried couple and their children’ (item 9), ‘a single parent and children’ (item 2), ‘a three-generation family; couple, widowed daughter and granddaughter’ (item 4), ‘three sisters’ (item 7), ‘an unmarried woman living with a son born from a sperm bank’ (item 19), ‘a separated couple with no child’ (item 13), ‘cousins living together’ (item 11), ‘a divorced man and his girlfriend with child’ (item 15) and ‘homosexual family’ (item 8). Second, as a result of assessing subjects’ needs for family functions and their efforts for family strengths, it was found that the family functions for family members scored higher than those for the society, and that subjects’ efforts for the family functions conducive to both their family members and society scored lower than their needs for the family functions. Third, subjects’ needs and efforts for family functions were positively correlated with family strengths. Namely, family functions were closely related with family strengths.