What is the aim of this study ?
We are looking for families (mother, father and a biological child between 10 and 12 years old) to participate in a scientific study. We will investigate how parents and children cope with and recover from stressful situations. For this, we will examine how different family members react to stressful situations, what you do and think in those situations, and what your emotional and physical reactions are. With the information we get from your participation in the study, we hope to find out more about how children and their parents interact and in what ways family members help each other cope better with tension and stress.
This first study consists of three parts:
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We will ask you each to fill in some questionnaires separately at home. This will take about 30 minutes to 1 hour.
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Then you will be asked (in consultation) to come together to school or to one of our universities (UMons, UCLouvain, KU Leuven, UGent, UAntwerpen or KU Leuven campus Kortrijk). We will connect a device to measure your heart activity and sweating. We will also collect your saliva to measure certain hormones, as well as genetic characteristics. We will ask each of you to listen to audio fragments with neutral, negative and positive comments. This session lasts a maximum of 2 hours.
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Finally, afterwards, each of you will be asked to create stories during an online appointment. This will take about 30 minutes.
Why participate ?
Resilience, understood as the ability to resist and bounce back after stressful and adverse events, protects parents and children from developing psychopathology. Because daily family life requires constant adaptation to changing challenging situations, there is a need for research to better understand what makes families resilient. We will learn how parents and children can better cope with difficult situations that cause tension in daily life. This research can provide important information to develop family therapies or programmes to prevent the emergence of difficulties in the family.