An empirical evaluation of family functioning as perceived by different members of nuclear families in the United Arab Emirates : family functioning in Arab families

Abstract EN

Several descriptive studies investigated family dynamics and relationships in gulf arab cultures.

we aimed to revisit this area with an empirical and quantitative investigation.

for that purpose we used the family apgar to evaluate the perceptions of fathers, mothers, teenage sons and teenage daughters in 44 families in the united arab emirates.

other than between sons and daughters, our results showed little agreement between those family members on their perceptions of family functioning.

cluster analysis identified three groups of different patterns of perceptions whieh seem to be related to the age of the parents suggesting generational differences.

the findings are discussed in the light of previous research.