The purpose of this research is to examine how AIDS affects family life and experience in lower socioeconomic levels of society. The plan of the research will e to set forth the pattern of ideas articulated in two articles that give an account of a study of families in this group deal with this subject and then discuss the relevance of each study report to social work, as well compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of each.
The study by Lesar and Maldonado (1997) sought to identify which aspects of family life are affected and to measure statistically the experience of being psychologically, economically, and socially on adults and children in households where children are infected with AIDS. The focus of study by Rotheram-Borus and Others (1998) was on measuring statistically factors of conflict and stress between adolescents and parents in households where one or more family members (not children especially) have AIDS, and whether and to what extent the presence of AIDS in a given family functioned as a key factor determining the nature of the relationship. Both studies appear to have been undertaken with a view toward forecasting possible lines of development of clinical outreach protocols that could respond effectively to populations that comprised the subjects of investigation. The scope of each study was limited by the demographics of subjects, inasmuch as subjects were recruited from the ranks of social-service case populations served by health-related agencies (Lesar & Maldonado, 1997, p. 274; Rotheram-Borus & Others, 1998, p. 85). In Lesar and Maldonado's study, a unique subject-recruitment criterion was that families had to have a child infected with AIDS; in the other study the unique recruitment criteria were that an adolescent had to be present in the household and that one or more parents in the household had been diagnosed with AIDS. However, in the study by Rotheram-Borus, et al., there was an attempt to r...