Hi everyone! This week’s blog post is going to cover some progress that I’ve made when it comes to my autoethnography! Just to catch up with anyone who does not know, I’m doing an autoethnography on growing up in dysfunctional families. 

I have really been diving into research regarding dysfunctional families and I have found that it is really interesting hearing about all of the different common types of dysfunctional families. I think that all of the secondary research I have collected from articles and websites will really help give a foundation on what dysfunctional families are/can be. I also think it will help give an idea on how growing up in these types of environments can affect children. While the secondary research will give a good foundation to my project, I think that the primary research (aka, my own personal experiences) will help give a more in-depth example of what it is actually like. I think that the primary part will overall cover more about emotions and let people understand what it is really like growing up in these types of environments. 

After conducting my interviews I thought it was super interesting seeing a lot of the overlap between experiences and stories. One of the girls I talked to explained how she learned to keep everything to herself because good or bad news her mom would react in a way that would make her feel bad. I had also experienced this, so it would cool to see how although we had different circumstances, the emotional response to a lot of the issues were the same. Between both interviews I conducted, I found that there were a lot of overlaps in hope we coped with the issues in our lives, as well as how it affected who we were today. The main differences were in just the experiences themselves, however, I think that it’s good that the experiences were different because it gives different perspectives on what growing up in dysfunctional families look like. 

I am planning on conducting a survey but have yet to put one out because I want to make sure I’m asking all of the questions I want to in order to get the information I am looking for. I’m planning on asking people if they would consider their families dysfunctional as well as to define what a dysfunctional family is (in their opinion). From there I am also considering asking how it affects their ideals when it comes to having a family, and possibly some other questions but I haven’t decided as of yet. 

I think the only concern I have for my project is how I am going to organize all of the information to make the site easy to navigate/understand. I also think I want to try to add different ways of conveying information (typed, pictures, videos, etc.) but I want to make sure nothing takes away from the point of the project (which is to inform the public on dysfunctional families). As of now I’m excited to get started piecing everything together, and if I feel like there are any holes in my project, I’m planning on doing more research if that problem arises. 

With that, I leave you with a few questions: Are there any interesting questions I should consider adding to my survey? How do you feel about using different types of media on my website (such as videos, pictures, paragraphs, etc.)?