es. Moreover, the authors found that the effects were even stronger for measures of school achievement. Indeed, not only did they find that children form stable homes had higher levels of school achievement than did children from divorced homes, they also found that males from divorced homes completed fewer years of school than males from stable, nuclear homes.
There are, however, a number of factors that can ease or mitigate the negative consequences of divorce. One of these that is directly related to this study is the variable of time. In this regard, Hetherington, Cox and Cox (1978) as well as Hetherington (1981) found that the negative consequences of divorce peak during the first year but that during the second year, family members begin to recoup and recover. If recovery goes well, gains that were lost as a result of the divorce will be made again.
Based on the findings presented in the foregoing review of the literature, the following hypotheses were formulated for testing in this study:
Hypothesis 1 - Students from stable homes will evidence significantly higher levels of academic achievement than will students form homes where parents have been divorced under one year.
Hypothesis 2 - Students from stable homes will not significantly differ in academic achievement from students from homes were parents have been divorced between one and two years.
Hypothesis 3 - Students from homes where parents have been divorced between one and two years will evidence significantly higher levels of academic achievement than will students from homes where parents have been divorced less than one year.
The expected results of this study were stated in the form of the research hypotheses. Why these results were anticipated can, however, be further explained. The expectation that the stable home students would do better academically than the students whose parents had been divorced less than one year was based on Het...