Fallding, Harold2013-01-152013-01-15b10149120http://hdl.handle.net/1885/9587The aim of the study is to give a specifically sociological account of a sample of 38 Sydney families, the sample being made up of 18 tradesmen's families and 20 professional workers; thereby contributing sociological data to the growing fund of knowledge on Australian families. I say the data are distinctively sociological, because I understand sociology to have its own subject matter which sets it apart from neighbouring disciplines, such as psychology, demography and political science. I accept as its field that which Durkheim defined for it, Viz. behaviour governed by rule or principled behaviour. The roles that articulate into social structures and the values that guide individuals toward their chosen satisfactions are the two main orders of data in this field, and the description of families is made mainly in terms of them. To this are added certain assumptions about motivation, and the members of the families are taken to be motivated in their strivings by needs for security, freedom and a sense of identity. The study is not a survey, by which I mean that I was not aiming to make accurate estimates from a sample of the incidence of any traits in the wider population. On the other hand, it is not narrowly focused on a particular problem or hypothesis, but it aims to identify the important sociological factors about the families and, if possible, to develop some hypothesis about the connections between them. However, as it is inevitable that some wider application of the findings should be possible, and in order to check on the level of confidence with which any hypothesis can be entertained, care was taken in selecting the families to avoid bias and some simple tests of statistical significance are made. Such tests have to be abandoned, though, in the more complex part of the analysis, which deals with clusterings of many factors in small numbers of cases. I collected the material by visiting the families at home, each one being visited for at least four full evenings, and I had dinner with a number of them. During these visits I had group interviews with the assembled family as well as individual interviews with all of the members. Comparable date were sought for all families by following a schedule, although much of it was not sought by questioning but non-directively, by allowing informal discussion to wander where it would. I was able to supplement information collected in this way by a certain amount of direct observation of the ways members reacted to one another.en-AUfamilies_Australia195610.25911/5d78da7aca38b