Your Cart

• Log in

• Related Products
• Parent
  • • International Journal of the Humanities
• Associated
  • • Providing Formative Feedback to Maximize Student Satisfaction and Learning in Online Courses
  • • The Study of the Need of Interior Design Based on the Interaction between Humans and Environment
  • • The Cultural Identity of Image Design, with Olympic Games as Example
  • • Shang Oracle Bone Agency
  • • Research for the Disabled
  • • Understanding the Misbehavior of At-Risk Students
  • • From Heroes to Villains
  • • Entrepreneurial Self-efficacy of Vocational and Technical Secondary School Students
  • • Education as a Human Science
  • • English and Korean in Contact
  • More →

In Search of their Personal Space: The Stories of Unmarried Women in Hong Kong

By Leung Kathy Kam Ping.

Published by The International Journal of the Humanities

The study adopted an intensive case study method to examine the experiences of selected clinical subjects. Stories and data came from first-hand clinical encounters, long-interviews and floor plan sketches of the homes of the subjects. The findings showed that the root problem was the respondents’ perception of their home habitats. The respondents’ perception of their home habitats was found to be closely related to the arrangement of space in their homes and their relationships with their families. The interaction between spatial arrangement and family relationship, by drawing the sketches of the home environment and asking exploratory questions, it was possible to examine the respondents’ family relationship in a non-intrusive way. This non-intrusive tool can inform counselors of their clients’ relationships with other family members in so far as it provides a map of his or her hierarchical position in the family as well as how space within the home is. The findings showed that goal frustration, lack of decision-making power over the use of space and pressure to the expectation of filial piety were three factors that influenced the subjects’ perception of their home environments. The three factors were interwoven and on occasion would unbalance the subjects’ internal mechanisms. The lived stories explained the interplay between the individuals’ complicated life situations, dilemma and home space by systemic framework.

International Journal of the Humanities, Volume 7, Issue 4, pp.15-20. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 1.427MB).

Leung Kathy Kam Ping

Instructor, Department of Applied Social Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China