DEBRIEFING THE FAMILY - IS RESEARCH AN INTERVENTION

The primary focus of this article is to examine the general assumption that families are left largely unchanged by their participation in re search, and to question whether family research can have unintended po sitive or negative effects on participants. The present article report s feedback from families participating in the Nonshared Environment an d Adolescent Development project, a longitudinal study of family proce ss and adolescent development. Families differed in their perceptions about whether the research experience was positive, detrimental, or in consequential. This feedback underscores the researcher's ethical resp onsibility to detect and remove deleterious effects of participation. Suggestions are made for providing adequate debriefing to subjects and for using debriefing as a research tool to study the interaction betw een researcher and families.