Date of Award

1986

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Program

Counseling Psychology, Ph.D.

First Advisor

Mercedes H. Dyer

Second Advisor

Thesba N. Johnston

Third Advisor

Jerome Thayer

Abstract

Problem. In today's society increasing stress and problems face the traditional Judeo-Christian marriage and family. Adolescents are being confronted with these problems as a result of the continuing rate of divorce and internal stress within family relations. The Seventh-day Adventist church has historically emphasized the importance of marriage and the family. However, as the Christian marriage and family face changes in today's society, there is a need for greater awareness of the factors which influence the premarital preparation of adolescents. The purpose of this study was to research adolescents' perceptions of their premarital preparation. The primary hypothesis of this study is that there is a relationship between perceived premarital preparation by SDA adolescents and their perception of how they have been prepared by the home, school, and church. This study utilized descriptive and correlational research. Data utilized in the research were collected from 332 seniors from 10 academies who answered the Premarital Preparation Questionnaire, a Likert-type attitudinal scale. In this ex-post facto study the data were studied by five types of statistical analyses: measures of central tendency, correlation coefficients, factor analysis, chi square, and analysis of variance. The results indicated that in 7 of the 12 subhypotheses the null hypothesis was rejected. The data indicated that adolescents generally perceived they were prepared in 16 premarital preparation topics and that the topics were very important. It was 'idicated that in general their exists a relationship between adolescents' perception of their premarital preparation and how their perception of the contribution by the home, school, and church relates to their preparation. It may be concluded from the data and comments by adolescents in this study that their approach to marriage and family life has been influenced by education, role models, and social environment. These factors and others appear to have influenced their perception of the premarital preparation provided them by the home, school, and church.

Subject Area

Youth--Counseling of, Marriage counseling.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dissertations/716/

Download

Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share

COinS