Communicating Support: Where and How Army Spouses Seek Community
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Running head: COMMUNICATING SUPPORT COMMUNICATING SUPPORT: WHERE AND HOW ARMY SPOUSES SEEK COMMUNITY Brigit Talkington A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2011 Committee: Catherine Cassara, Advisor Timothy Pogacar Graduate Faculty Representative Lynda Dee Dixon Mark A Earley Lara Martin Lengel COMMUNICATING SUPPORT Dedication To all the men and women who serve either as military members or as support to those who do. © 2011 Brigit K. Talkington All Rights Reserved COMMUNICATING SUPPORT iii Abstract Dr. Catherine Cassara, Advisor Army spouses, both male and female, experience life stressors unparalleled in other populations. This thematic analysis of qualitative data from the 2004 US Army Research Institute‟s Survey of Army Families V uncovered ten main themes while exploring how Army spouses communicate and constitute social support. Through grounded theory framework, suggestions are made for supporting this understudied population (96% of whom are female) from the 1,823 open-ended responses received. Ten themes radiate out from the heart of the research question, how do Army spouses communicate and constitute social support? These are: the level of support perceived (or lacking), the types of support perceived (and lacking), support providers, information, knowledge, Family Readiness (Support) Groups, consistency, attitude toward the military lifestyle, media and the internet, and issues with the military itself. This study discusses those ten themes and then focuses on five additional findings. As the first of those findings, utilizing a pentad of social support aspects (emotional, informational, instrumental, belonging, and nurturing social support) allowed for a legitimate assessment of the construct of social support; all five aspects applied in this study are necessary and sufficient. Also, future focus group research of this population ought to contain consistency, hypocrisy, rank, and FRG reform to be thorough. Additionally, extrapolation of findings to other populations might be acceptable, given certain considerations uncovered in this research. Communication scholars can and should apply their knowledge to assist army spouses in a myriad of ways discussed in the study in detail. Perhaps most importantly, social support of the army spouse could and should be increased by using a cultural lens which considers the Military Culture and the Military Dependent Culture as distinct and interrelated entities. COMMUNICATING SUPPORT iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you seems trite, so a warm “Hooah” is necessary for the following people without whom this dissertation would not have been feasible. This dissertation, indeed my whole program of study, would not have been possible without the blessing of God himself. Others were also instrumental in supporting me through this endeavor. My family, friends, and colleagues have all been very patient with me, and have pushed me to push myself beyond what I thought I could accomplish. There are too many who have been supportive for me to list, but there are a few who merit special mention: My Committee - Chair Catherine Cassara, Timothy Pogacar, Lynda Dixon, Mark Earley, and Laura Lengel have all been so helpful and patient as they guided me through this process. Thank you for the inspiration, rigor, sage advice, and caring enough to be thorough. My Family - Adam and the Kids – Kathryn, Piran, Darien, Galen and Caitlyn have all sacrificed along with me and been patient with the hours spent away from them and the time spent preoccupied by my “homework.” My mom and dad, my brother and his children, my aunts and uncles, have all been supportive in pushing me, and in providing assistance with daily life to provide me time to write and re-write. Thank you all for your faith in me. My Ladies – Aubrey Saus, Lori Lawson, Julie Parenteau, Kate LaPierre, Toneisha Taylor, Ramune Braiziunaite have proofed, provided emotional support, provided accountability, encouraged me, listened to me rant, and have in general been there for me. My Colleagues – At Bowling Green, George Mason, NVCC, Creighton, UNO, and Metro. Specific thanks to Gary Kreps who helped me encourage Jagadish Thacker and Blair Buckland to help me with coding. Also, much of my progress was completed in Don Boileau‟s spare office space where I could go and hide away from all other responsibilities and make focused effort – thank you for the mentorship, Don. Army Spouses everywhere, without whom this dissertation would never have even been conceived. COMMUNICATING SUPPORT v CONTENTS Page PREFACE ……………………………………………….. ....................................... 1 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER ................................................................................. 4 CHAPTER I. BACKGROUND ................................................................................. 11 CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW…… ......................................................... 34 CHAPTER III. METHODOLOGY ........................................................................... 68 CHAPTER IV. RESULTS RELATING TO SOCIAL SUPPORT .......................... 74 CHAPTER V. RESULTS RELATING TO THE ARMY SPOUSE LIFESTYLE ... 149 CHAPTER VI. SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION .................................................. 178 REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 201 APPENDIX A. INSTRUMENT .............................................................................. 219 APPENDIX B. HSRB APPROVAL ........................................................................ 235 APPENDIX C. DISCUSSION OF METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES NOT TAKEN…………………………………………….. 238 APPENDIX D. RANDOM SAMPLE RESPONSES……………………………… 246 APPENDIX E. CODEBOOK…………………………..…………….……………. 256 APPENDIX F SUGGESTIONS MADE BY SPOUSES IN THE DATA SORTED FOR THIS STUDY…………………………….. 258 COMMUNICATING SUPPORT 1 Preface Army spouses1 experience life stressors unparalleled in other populations, and their abilities to cope impact themselves, their active duty, service member spouse, their dependents, and the societies around them. Military family policy has evolved from the time of the Revolutionary War through eras of neglect, ambivalence, grudging acceptance of family needs to serious pursuit of partnership with military families (Albano, 1994). The recognition of the importance of a community of spouses associated with the Army was openly acknowledged by the military beginning in 1965 with programs such as Army Community Services. With the recognition that this community is worthy of study, came efforts such as those of the United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI), which periodically surveys Army families through questionnaires such as the Survey of Army Families I-V. The content of the Army Families surveys makes it clear that those responsible for their design expect that interpersonal relationships and the media are both implicated as partners in the support networks, both formal and informal, of Army spouses. This appears in questions asking about whom the spouse would turn to with a personal or family problem and how the spouse is doing in obtaining needed communication. But, while scholars from anthropology and psychology have devoted some attention to the study of military families, communication researchers have so far concerned themselves only with aspects of communication within the military itself. The communication of experiences of military dependents is uncharted territory. Thus, this project set out to explore how Army spouses use communication both to construct community and to accept and constitute support. 1 At the time of SAFV, 96% of spouses were female and 4% were male. COMMUNICATING SUPPORT 2 Questions as to how these individuals understand their world through communication were explored using secondary data analysis of surveys returned by a large sample (n=6,759) of Army spouses (Westhuis & Fafara, 2002, p. 4). The qualitative data in this snap shot of the lives of army spouses totaled 1,823 open-ended responses from the comments page of the survey. The responses varied in length from less than one line to an entire page (typed, single-spaced), and were garnered from the entire sample, utilizing keyword searches. The keywords searched were sometimes root words, so that all permutations of the term could be captured. The number of responses in which each keyword appeared is as follows: communica* (140); community (132); friend* (202); informat* (266); know (550); support (553). As each of these keyword searches were conducted on the entire data set, there is necessarily overlap between the subsets whenever a respondent used more than one of the keywords in a response. Given the nature of the research topic, the survey findings were analyzed in the context of literature from interpersonal communication researchers, media theorists, and scholars from additional several fields who have written on the development and maintenance of support and community. More specifically, this project drew on interpersonal inquiry concerned with relationship dialectics and social penetration theory. It drew from media scholarship concerned with how audiences use media to meet their needs and how audience members generate their understandings of the meaning of media content through consultation with others. It is hoped that this study will provide a foundation for