NUR3045 familial health traditions interview paper guide
One page, one interview, and a summary that has to cover familial change, social change, ethnocultural heritage and religious heritage — the interview questions decide whether all four are there or only the easy two.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 10, 2026
What does the familial health traditions paper have to show?
The whole assignment fits on one page, which makes it feel small and is exactly why it goes wrong. Four things have to appear in that page: familial changes, social changes, your ethnocultural heritage and your religious heritage, plus at least one worked example. Most submissions come back with a warm account of a grandparent's remedies and nothing about social change or religion at all — not because the student forgot, but because they never asked. The interview happens once, and whatever you failed to ask about is simply absent from the paper. So the real work on this assignment is done before you sit down with anyone: write your questions against the four required outputs, one cluster per output, and check the list before the conversation rather than after it. An older relative will also give you one good sitting and rarely a second, so treat the interview as a single irreversible data-collection step and prepare for it accordingly.
The directions on pages 160 and 161 are the heritage assessment in Spector's Cultural Diversity in Health and Illness, and reading them is not optional groundwork — they are the instrument the whole assignment is built around. The tool works by degree rather than by category: it asks where family members were born, how many siblings, whether relatives lived nearby, what language was spoken at home, how often religious ceremonies were attended, whether food preparation followed heritage practices. The pattern of answers indicates how strongly a person identifies with a traditional heritage rather than sorting them into a culture. That is the finding your summary is supposed to report, so resist the pull toward describing the culture itself and report the degree of identification your interview actually revealed. A relative who was born abroad, spoke the heritage language at home and attended ceremonies weekly sits at one end; a relative born locally into a family that had already stopped is at the other, and most people are somewhere between.
Interview an older relative, and choose one who is old enough for change to be visible. The assignment asks about familial and social changes, which only appear when there is a before and an after to compare, so a relative who has lived through migration, urbanisation, a change in religious practice, or a shift from home remedies to clinic care will produce a richer paper than one whose life has been continuous. Ask about specifics rather than themes: what did your mother do when you had a fever, who decided when someone needed a doctor, what was cooked at holidays and who cooked it, what happened when a member of the family died. Concrete practices are what a one-page paper can actually carry, and they are what a general question about traditions never elicits. If a question can be answered with a single adjective, rewrite it as a question about an occasion.
The single example the brief asks for is the load-bearing sentence in the paper. It should be a specific practice you can name — a food, a remedy, an observance, a role — and it should do two jobs at once: illustrate the heritage and show what has happened to it across generations. "My grandmother made a mustard poultice for chest congestion; my mother used it only when the pharmacy was closed; I have never made one" is one sentence that carries the tradition, the transmission and the loss. A generic example such as "my family values respect for elders" carries none of them and could have been written without conducting an interview at all, which is the impression you most need to avoid. Choose the example while you are still with your relative, and ask a follow-up question about it there and then, so the sentence has detail behind it rather than recollection.
There is a research finding worth knowing before you interpret your own results, because it will keep you from the obvious conclusion. Heritage retention and adoption of the surrounding culture are not two ends of one line — a person can score high or low on both independently, and studies treating them as separate dimensions find that the combination predicts health beliefs better than either alone. So if your interview shows a relative who cooks traditionally, attends religious ceremonies and also uses biomedical care without hesitation, that is not a contradiction to be explained away. It is the normal shape of the finding, and saying so is a more sophisticated reading than reporting a decline. Your own position matters too: the assignment says your ethnocultural and religious heritage, so the summary is about what you inherited, not only about what your relative practised. Where the two diverge, that divergence is the finding.
On format, the brief is unusually explicit and its requirements are cheap to satisfy: one page, APA margins, formatting and spacing, submitted as a saved Word document. APA style here means the paper-format rules — one-inch margins, double spacing, a standard accessible font — rather than a full reference apparatus, since a paper built on one interview may have very little to cite. If you do cite the textbook for the heritage assessment, cite it properly. One page also means roughly 250 to 300 words, which is not room for an introduction that announces what the paper will do; start with the interview and let the four required elements carry the structure. The submission mechanics are graded too — save the file, then upload the file — so leave a minute for the step that has nothing to do with writing.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Design interview questions from required outputs rather than from general curiosity.
- 02Read a heritage assessment as a measure of degree of identification, not as a cultural label.
- 03Distinguish familial change from social change when both appear in one life story.
- 04Report a specific transmitted practice as evidence rather than a general value.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes. Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages. Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor. The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument. Assignment Family Traditions ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS Discussion Questions (DQ) Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words. Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source. One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words. I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses. Weekly Participation Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately. In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies. Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work). Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week. APA Format and Writing Quality Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required). Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation. I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition. Use of Direct Quotes I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly. As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content. It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source. LopesWrite Policy For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me. Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes. Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own? Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score. Late Policy The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies. Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances. If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect. I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension. As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading. Communication Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class. Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.
What one page must contain
- 01A one-page paper.
- 02Findings from an interview with an older family member.
- 03A summary of familial changes and social changes.
- 04A summary of your ethnocultural heritage and your religious heritage.
- 05At least one example.
- 06APA margins, formatting and spacing, submitted as an uploaded Microsoft Word file.
How to structure a one-page heritage summary
The interview and who was interviewed
Establish who the relative is, their generation and origin, in the two or three sentences the page allows.
Familial and social changes
Report what changed within the family and what changed around it, keeping the two distinguishable.
Ethnocultural and religious heritage
Summarise what the assessment revealed about degree of identification with the traditional heritage.
The example
Give one specific practice and show what happened to it across the generations you can see.
Preparing the interview and reading the assessment tool
Recommended databases
- Your course textbook, pages 160–161
- The NUR3045 library APA Style tutorial named in the brief
- PubMed Central
Search sequence
- 1.Read pages 160 and 161 first and write out the assessment items; the questions you ask should mirror them.
- 2.Group your questions into four clusters matching the four required outputs, and add one closing question inviting anything you did not think to ask.
- 3.Check the APA paper-format rules for margins, spacing and font before you write, since those are the only style points this brief actually scores.
- 4.If you want a source for interpreting your findings, search the acculturation literature for studies treating heritage retention and host-culture adoption as separate dimensions rather than a single scale.
Sources behind the heritage assessment
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Cultural diversity in health and illness
Rachel E. Spector, via the Internet Archive lending library · 2004
The textbook the page references point into, including the Heritage Assessment Tool. Use it to see the assessment items themselves; borrow the edition your course uses, since pagination differs between editions and your pages 160–161 may sit elsewhere in this copy.
- 02
Creating a family health history interview protocol for use with undergraduate health professional students: A scoping review
Public Health in Practice · 2024
Twenty-four sources synthesised into practical guidance on setting, preparation and question design for students interviewing relatives. Read it for how to run the conversation; it is about health history rather than heritage, so it does not replace the assessment tool.
- 03
Acculturation and Health Beliefs: Interactions between Host and Heritage Culture Underlie Latina/o Caregivers' Beliefs about HPV Vaccination
Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health · 2021
Evidence that heritage retention and host-culture adoption operate as independent dimensions, so a relative can be strongly traditional and comfortably biomedical at once. Cite it if you interpret your findings rather than only reporting them.
- 04
Paper Format
American Psychological Association · 2024
The authoritative statement of APA margins, line spacing, font and alignment for student papers — which is precisely the part of APA style this brief asks for. It does not cover citation formatting; go to the citations pages if you quote the textbook.
Before you upload
Common mistakes
- Interviewing without a question list built from the four required elements, and discovering the gaps only while writing.
- Describing the culture in general instead of reporting what this relative's answers showed about degree of identification.
- Treating familial and social change as one thing, so the paper covers the family and never the wider society.
- Omitting religious heritage because the relative is not currently observant, when the question is about heritage rather than present practice.
- Offering a value such as respect for elders as the example, which requires no interview to produce.
- Reading heritage retention and assimilation as opposites, and forcing the findings into a story of decline.
- Running past one page, which the brief specifies exactly.
Submission checklist
- The interview was conducted with an older family member, not a peer.
- Familial changes and social changes are both addressed and are distinguishable.
- Ethnocultural heritage and religious heritage each appear.
- At least one named, specific example is present.
- The example shows transmission across generations rather than a static description.
- The paper is one page with APA margins, spacing and font.
- The file is saved as a Word document and uploaded, not pasted into the submission box.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
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Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.