Final Project Guidelines: Family Interview
For the purpose of this assignment you will conduct a single interview with a family (two or more members) to assess family processes and development. The family must be a family that is not your own. Interviews typically last between 45-90 minutes, depending on the family, and should be conducted with as many members as possible present.
You are required to create a fictional name for your family to help maintain their anonymity and confidentiality. Follow-up questions and other salient questions and topics may be explored with each family as you see fit.
Please be sure to ask enough questions to obtain the information you need to:
- Complete a thorough family chronology (members, ages, significant family events, length of relationships, recent expansion or contraction of the family system)
- Summarize the family's rules, roles, boundaries, expectations, cultural and ethnic influences, spiritual and or religious background, community involvement, personal interests etc. Be sure to use clinical language to support your conceptualization of this family.
- Summarize the family's strengths and discuss how concepts related to wellness could be incorporated in supporting this family. Determine who you would include in couples or family counseling sessions if you were to see this family as a client, and justify your response.
- Collect information about the family's current life cycle stage(s) and family functioning styles, patterns and quality. Which family assessments might you use if you were this family's counselor?
Papers should be completed in APA format in 10-12 double-spaced pages (this does not include any title or reference pages). Interview data can be collected however you see fit- audio recording is often helpful, but taking detailed notes works just as well for some. You are not required to submit interview transcripts.
Particular assessment and grading attention will be given to your discussion of the relevant stages, interactions, developmental and systemic elements of the family life cycle, as well as the varying family structural forms, socio-cultural contexts and developmental challenges relevant to promoting wellness in the family.
Please include at least 5 scholarly resources to support your work. Resources should include, at minimum, the course text and four peer reviewed journal articles. As you gather your interview data, conceptualize that information according to the concepts we have learned throughout the quarter. Refer to the final project rubric for specific grading criteria.
An interview guide is attached and should be used to elicit responses from the family you choose to interview.
- Could you please introduce me to your family members, and tell me what is important to know about the make-up of your family? (for example: age of children, descriptive information of each family member)
- Who lives in your household?
- Tell me about the relationships in your family- who is close to whom?
- Have there been any significant changes in your family recently (1-2 years)?
- What does a typical day look like for your family?
- How do you make decisions in your family/as a family?
- What types of things do you do as a family/couple?
- Describe some of your individual interests? Is this/Are these shared interests?
- How do you support each other's individual interests?
- Tell me about a time your family has struggled through a crisis or major family event.
Attachment:- Assignment Files.rar