Family study students win national award

The National Council on Family Relations awarded four Weber State University students the 2006 Outstanding Undergraduate Research Paper for their study of romantic relationships. Misty Burnett, Rachel Thompson, Anne Vogel and Jacob Priest, all WSU family studies seniors, researched how breaking up affects peoples' beliefs of relationship myths developed by Jeffry Larson. Some of these myths include the importance of perfecting oneself before marriage or finding a perfect partner and the idea that any problem can be solved with enough effort, according to Paul Schvaneveldt, WSU child and family studies assistant professor. The students found that people with more life experience, such as older students and people who had experienced several breakups, tended to not believe the myths. "Another way of saying this is that breaking up in a relationship is hard to do," Schvaneveldt said, "but it's good for you in a way because it helps you get a more realistic picture of what leads to a healthy, successful relationship." Next week, the students will be recognized at the NCFR annual conference in Minneapolis, Minn. They will also display their project as a poster presentation. In fall 2005, the four students enrolled in Schvaneveldt's child and family studies research methods class. As part of the class, the students had to conduct a group research project. The students said they decided to study dating because this was a topic relevant to all four members since they were all dating at the time, Thompson said. The group developed a questionnaire and administered it to more than 260 WSU students from different departments. In their research paper, the students recorded that the mean age was 22.26, but the respondents' ages ranged from 18 to 49; 70.1 percent of the respondents said they had undergone a serious breakup. "People that had more breakups were likely to believe that you should choose somebody opposite from yourself, which is not a very healthy idea according to Larson," Priest said. "Which I thought was interesting." After the group presented their finished project to the class, Schvaneveldt encouraged the students to submit their paper to research conferences and contests. "He gave us really positive feedback for our original work," Burnett said, "and so we just felt like that since he had encouraged us so much that we had done a good project and that we could fix it up pretty quickly and easily, get it ready for the national contest." Priest also said he wanted to continue working on the project because he said he is applying for graduate school. The other three members said they do not plan on applying for graduate school in the near future, but the project will add to any résumé or job application. The students presented their paper at both the 2006 WSU Undergraduate Research Symposium in March, and the Utah Council on Family Relations in April. Recently, Schvaneveldt used the students' research paper during a PowerPoint presentation for a class. Burnett, Thompson and Vogel said they enjoyed this recognition. WSU students were also awarded this NCFR honor in 2003 and 2004, according to Schvaneveldt.

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