HSC Community and Family Studies cheat sheet

Resources are classified as human (energy, knowledge, skills, motivation) or non-human (money, time, equipment, food, shelter, space).

The resource management process follows: identify needs and wants, prioritise, plan, implement, evaluate; evaluation feeds back into the next cycle.

Needs are essential for survival (food, water, shelter); wants improve wellbeing but are not essential, so they are ranked lower in priority.

Maslow's hierarchy order: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, self-actualisation; lower needs are typically addressed before higher ones.

Goal setting is effective when goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART); vague goals are harder to evaluate.

Decision-making styles: impulsive (fast, low information), intuitive (feeling-based), hesitant (delayed), confident (informed, decisive); each suits different time pressures.

Time management tools include schedules, to-do lists and prioritising urgent versus important tasks; sequencing tasks reduces idle time.

Interchangeable resources (for example money for time, or technology for labour) allow substitution when one resource is scarce.

Access to resources is influenced by age, gender, education, income, location, disability and cultural background, which shape resource availability.

Groups form for a purpose: social interaction, shared goals, task completion, or belonging; membership can be formal or informal.

Group roles include leader, facilitator, recorder, timekeeper and participant; unclear roles create conflict and reduce productivity.

Leadership styles: autocratic (leader decides), democratic (shared decisions), laissez-faire (minimal direction), transformational (vision-driven change).

Tuckman's stages of group development: forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning; conflict peaks in storming.

Conflict resolution strategies include negotiation, mediation, arbitration and avoidance; mediation uses a neutral third party without imposing a decision.

Communication is verbal, non-verbal or written; barriers include noise, jargon, emotions, assumptions and cultural difference.

Socialisation occurs through family (primary), peers, school, media and workplace (secondary), transmitting norms, values and roles.

Rights and responsibilities are linked: each right (for example to be heard) carries a matching responsibility (for example to listen).

Family structures include nuclear, extended, blended, sole-parent, same-sex-parent, foster and childless; structure affects roles and resource sharing.

Family functions: physical (food, shelter), emotional (security, love), social (socialisation), economic (income, consumption), and reproductive.

The family life cycle stages: beginning, expanding, developing, launching, ageing; needs and resources change at each transition.

Community types include geographic (neighbourhood, town) and communities of interest or identity (cultural, religious, sporting).

Support networks include informal (family, friends, neighbours) and formal (government agencies, NGOs, health and education services).

Changing family patterns (divorce, later marriage, smaller families, increased female workforce participation) alter caregiving and resource demands.

Parenting styles: authoritative (high warmth, high expectations), authoritarian (low warmth, high control), permissive (high warmth, low control), uninvolved.

Community wellbeing is influenced by access to housing, employment, education, health services, transport and social connection.

Legislation and policy (for example child protection, anti-discrimination, family benefits) shape family roles and responsibilities.

Research purpose categories: descriptive (what is), explanatory (why), predictive (what will be), and evaluative (how well something works).

Sampling methods: random (every member has equal chance), stratified (by subgroup), systematic (fixed interval), convenience (available participants), snowball (referrals).

Data types: primary (collected first-hand) versus secondary (existing sources); quantitative (numerical) versus qualitative (descriptive, meaning-based).

Reliability means consistency of repeated results; validity means the research measures what it claims to measure.

Ethical requirements: informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity, voluntary participation, no harm, and the right to withdraw.

Questionnaires suit large samples and closed questions; interviews give depth; observation records behaviour in context; case studies examine one case in depth.

Bias sources include leading questions, unrepresentative samples, researcher expectations and self-report inaccuracy.

Data analysis: quantitative uses frequencies, percentages, mean, median, mode and range; qualitative uses thematic coding and categorisation.

The research process: define problem, literature review, hypothesis or question, design, collect data, analyse, interpret, report and evaluate.