Measuring Developmental Idealism and Family Life

描述（由申请人提供）：这是一份探索性/发展性研究资助（R21）的提案，重点是发展理想主义与婚姻、生育和离婚。拟议项目的目的是创建和测试问卷和协议，这些问卷和协议将适用于衡量世界各地各种环境下的发展理想主义及其与婚姻、生育和离婚的关系。从现代化和发展的有影响的模式中产生的发展理想主义确定了应追求的目标、评价家庭生活的一种手段、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是美好的，是可以实现的；(b)现代家庭生活是美好和可实现的；(c)现代家庭和现代社会经济条件互为因果影响；(d)人有自由和平等的权利，关系建立在双方同意的基础上。我们认为，这些主张已在世界各地广泛传播，并对家庭和人口生活产生了重大影响。尽管发展理想主义对家庭生活具有理论和实践的重要性，但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。测量工具的缺乏使得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变得困难。这个项目将创建和评估关于发展理想主义的信念及其与婚姻、生育和离婚的关系。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、埃及和美国开展试点研究，以测试我们的测量方法在这些不同环境中的适用程度。在这个项目中制定的措施将提供手段，以便在今后的一个项目中发起一项关于发展理想主义及其在家庭生活中的作用的国际研究方案。

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.