摘要：This paper describes theoretical and methodological frame for the research project »Family in Post-war Croatia-conducted by the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb research team. The principal goal was to examine the structure, roles, values, functioning and living conditions as well as other significant characteristics of families with at least one child of elementary school age, or rather a group of socio productive families. Fieldwork had been conducted in 1998 and 1999. By type it was diagnostic survey research. The sample consists of 874 families with elementary school children residing in the Republic of Croatia. The family was the elementary unit of analysis. For each family we gathered data for both spouses separately, which gave us 1748 respondents. The basic stratification of the sample was done according to region and town size. The main instrument used in the research was a protocol for a structured interview with the mother or the father. The interview consists of 113 questions out of which 87 are closed questions with a limited number of given answers and 26 are open-ended questions. Since some of the questions have a possibility of multiple choices, we defined a total of 438 variables. The research covered general social-demographic variables, the perception of environment pollution, material and living conditions, family and general values, religious behaviour, family's social functioning, interfamily and partner relations and the behaviour and the problems of children. The sample consists of 874 families with elementary school children residing in the Republic of Croatia. The family was the elementary unit of analysis. For each family we gathered data for both spouses separately. The basic stratification of the sample was done according to region and town size. The main instrument used in the research was a protocol for a structured interview with the mother or the father. The interview consists of 113 questions out of which 87 are closed questions with a limited number of given answers and 26 are open ended questions. Since some of the questions have a possibility of multiple choices, we defined a total of 438 variables. The research covered general social-demographic variables, the perception of environment polution, material and living conditions, family and general values, religious behavior, family's social functioning, intrafamily and partner relations and the behavior and the problems of children.
关键词：family; research methodology; sample; variables; settlement size
