Confirmation in Parent–Adolescent Relationships and Adolescent Openness: Toward Extending Confirmation Theory

Abstract

Using self-report and observational data from parent and mid-adolescent dyads, this study examined the role of confirmation in parent–adolescent relationships regarding adolescents’ openness with their parents. Results from the self-report data suggest a positive link between parental confirmation and adolescent openness. The observational data revealed a more complex picture, particularly highlighting adolescents’ role in parent–adolescent communication as well as in their own openness. Adolescents’ confirmation was positively related to their openness, particularly for females. Sequential analyses further revealed that adolescents reporting less openness exhibited a greater mix of confirming and disconfirming messages towards parents, whereas adolescents reporting more openness exhibited more reciprocation of confirmation. The results suggest theory regarding confirmation in family relationships should incorporate a transactional perspective.

Keywords:

• Confirmation
• Openness
• Parent–Adolescent Communication

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 National Communication Association, Boston, MA.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 National Communication Association, Boston, MA.

Acknowledgments

This paper is based on a portion of the author's dissertation research directed by Beth A. Le Poire and was partially funded by the George McCune dissertation fellowship. The author would like to thank her dissertation chair as well as committee members, Howard Giles, David Seibold, and Shane Jimerson, for their valuable input. The author would also like to thank the editor, Alan Sillars, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions regarding this manuscript.

Notes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 National Communication Association, Boston, MA.

1. Within this conceptualization, relational climate is viewed from the individual's perspective—the emotional tone or atmosphere an individual perceives from messages exhibited in the relationship.

2. A total of 66 dyads participated in the study, but several factors modified the total number of dyads used in the analyses. Some families had one adolescent participate with one parent and another adolescent participate with the other parent. As such, only one dyad from each family could be used in order to avoid interdependence in the data. In these cases, the father–adolescent dyad was retained for analyses because more mothers participated than fathers. Additionally, the interaction task was modified after the first three dyads, and hence, these initial dyads were not used in the analysis of the observation data but were used in analyses of self-report data. The total number of dyads retained was 57 for the observational data analyses and 59 for the self-report data analyses. (Because two of the first three dyads were from the same family, only two of these three were retained.)

3. The dyad was asked to interact for 12 minutes based on previous research that had used similar time frames. Additionally, because participants were also asked to complete lengthy questionnaires, the interaction was limited to 12 minutes to avoid fatigue.

4. Coding was restricted to 5 minutes as several dyads completed the moral dilemma tasks before the end of 12 minutes and several other dyads appeared to lose interest in the tasks (e.g., exhibited long periods of silence). Hence, the 5 minutes that were coded best captured the interactions regarding the moral dilemmas.

5. Though there are some limitations to this—most importantly that certain dyads may have more weight in the analyses (see Gottman & Roy, 1990)—the analyses conducted in the current study (i.e., chi-square tests) are not subject to this limitation because the transitional probabilities are grouped based on a median split rather than averaged across dyads.

6. Transitional probabilities were used here instead of adjusted residuals as the latter could not be calculated for dyads in which a certain sequence did not occur (e.g., adolescent confirmation–parental disconfirmation).

7. When there are only two possible responses to a given message (e.g., confirmation and disconfirmation), the transitional probabilities add together to equal 1. Thus, if the transitional probability of, for example, adolescent confirmation followed by parent confirmation is known, the transitional probability of adolescent confirmation followed by parent disconfirmation should equal the known probability subtracted from 1. This, when pooling dyads together, can be seen in Table 4. This suggests that only one sequence of the two would need to be assessed. However, certain individual dyads did not display particular messages. For example, some parents did not exhibit disconfirmation. Thus, in this case, for that dyad, the transitional probabilities for both sequences involving parent disconfirmation were 0 as the sequences of parent disconfirmation followed by either adolescent confirmation or disconfirmation did not occur. This makes the distributions of the transitional probabilities of the two sequences slightly different (one is not the exact inverse of the other). Thus, all eight sequences were examined to accommodate these differences.

8. Family satisfaction was assessed using Huston, McHale, and Crouter's (1996) scale. On a 7-point scale, mean ratings were 5.74 (SD=0.75) for parents and 5.30 (SD=0.92) for adolescents. Correlation between adolescents’ perceived parental confirmation and family satisfaction is .68, p<.01.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

René M. Dailey

René M. Dailey (PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara) is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin