Of the ten blended families who are expected to participate in this research study, each blended family would have consisted of the father, the mother, along with the children from current and previous marriages who spend the majority of time with the family. In the study, five families would have been randomly assigned to the control group and the remaining five families to the treatment group. While the control group would not have received any intervention, the treatment group would be provided with narrative therapy twice a week for three weeks. At the end of the three week study period, the parents in both the control and the treatment groups would be administered the DCI, while the children would complete the CTS. Participants would be expected to respond to these questionnaires based on their parents' behavior during the last week of the week.
The primary expected outcome of this study would be the reduction in the levels of marital therapy in the blended families in the treatment group. Therefore, the post-tests would show that the treatment group as a whole had lower levels of marital conflicts than their counterparts in the control group. Due to the subjectivity of narrative therapy, it would also be likely that the comparison among the responses of the blended families in the treatment group would yield varying scores. Nonetheless, the individual families in the treatment group would all have lower levels of marital conflicts than each of the individual blended families in the control group.
The results of this study would likely meet the initial expectations of this researcher for a number of reasons. Through the therapeutic intervention, it would be likely that the family members would be able to identify the underlying causes of the conflicts and acknowledge the adverse impact of the marital conflicts on the family members. With the help of the narrative therapist, the parents would lik
...