“Taking Good Care of Our Health”: Parent-Adolescent Perceptions of Boundary Management About Health Information

Family members’ communication about health has a significant impact on issues of obtaining social support, avoiding stigma, and seeking and receiving appropriate medical treatment and care. A Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theoretical perspective was used to analyze 85 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with parents and one of their adolescent children in 40 families. Findings reveal intergenerational motivations and strategies for managing individual and collective privacy boundaries around health information and the consequences of this management for individuals and families. Motivations include protecting personal privacy, preventing stress, and soliciting social support. Strategies for boundary management include humor and topic avoidance. Implications for future research in the areas of privacy management, health, and family relationships are discussed.     

The Influence of Students’ and Teachers’ Thinking Styles on Student Course Satisfaction and on Their Learning Process

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effect of teachers’ and students’ thinking styles on students’ satisfaction with the course followed and on their learning process. The sample was made up of 102 instructional psychology college students who responded to two administrations of the Thinking Style Inventory, one about their teacher and one about themselves, to a satisfaction scale referring to the instructional process, and finally to a scale designed to measure the time and effort they devoted to the learning process. Multivariate regression analyses were carried out. Results reveal that both teachers’ and students’ thinking styles are good predictors of students’ satisfaction and their involvement in the learning process.