Measuring Developmental Idealism and Family Life

描述(由申请人提供)：这是一项探索性/发展性研究基金(R21)的建议，重点是发展理想主义和婚姻、生育和离婚。拟议项目的目的是创建和测试适用于在世界各地的各种环境中衡量发展理想主义及其与婚姻、生育和离婚的关系的问卷和协议。从有影响力的现代化和发展模式发展而来的发展理想主义，确定了要追求的目标、评估家庭生活的手段、确定家庭与社会和经济生活之间因果影响的因果框架以及关于人权的声明。发展理想主义有四个主要主张：(A)现代社会和经济生活良好且可以实现；(B)现代家庭生活良好且可实现；(C)现代家庭和现代社会经济状况相互影响；(D)人类有权自由和平等，并在同意的基础上建立关系。我们认为，这些主张已经在世界各地广泛传播，并对家庭和人口生活产生了巨大影响。尽管发展理想主义对家庭生活具有理论和实践上的重要性，但目前还没有公认的工具来衡量世界人口对发展理想主义的接受或拒绝。由于缺乏测量工具，很难实施一项调查发展理想主义及其对家庭生活影响的研究计划。这个项目将创建和评估关于发展理想主义及其与婚姻、生育和离婚的关系的信念的测量。定性研究将指导这些测量工具的创建，我们将在阿根廷、中国、埃及和美国进行试点研究，以测试我们的测量方法在这些不同环境中的适用性程度。该项目所制定的措施将为在未来的项目中启动一项有关发展理想主义及其在家庭生活中的作用的国际研究方案提供手段。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a proposal for an exploratory/developmental research grant (R21) focusing on developmental idealism and marriage, childbearing, and divorce. The purpose of the proposed project is to create and test questionnaires and protocols that will be appropriate for measuring developmental idealism and its relationship to marriage, childbearing, and divorce in a wide variety of settings around the world. Developmental idealism, which grows out of the influential models of modernization and development, identifies goals to be pursued, a means for evaluating family life, a causal framework identifying causal influences between family and social and economic life, and statements about human rights. There are four main propositions of developmental idealism: (a) modern social and economic life is good and attainable; (b) modern family life is good and attainable; (c) modern families and modern socioeconomic conditions causally influence each other; and (d) human beings have the right to be free and equal, with relationships based on consent. We believe that these propositions have been disseminated widely around the world and have had great influence on family and demographic life. Despite the theoretical and practical importance of developmental idealism for family life, there are no well-recognized tools to measure acceptance or rejection of developmental idealism in the world's populations. This dearth of measurement tools makes it difficult to implement a research program investigating developmental idealism and its influence on family life. This project will create and evaluate measures of beliefs concerning developmental idealism and their relationship to marriage, childbearing, and divorce. Qualitative studies will guide the creation of these measurement tools, and we will conduct pilot studies in Argentina, China, Egypt, and the United States to test the extent to which our measures are appropriate in these disparate settings. The measures created in this project will provide the means to launch in a future project an international program of research concerning developmental idealism and its role in family life.