The International Family Quality of Life Project, begun in 1997, involves the collaboration of a team of researchers from Australia, Canada, Israel, and the United States whose aim was to conceptualize “family quality of life” and develop a survey tool. The authors describe the basis for the conceptualization and explain the survey development process. An initial version of the survey (the Family Quality of Life Survey—FQoLS‐2000) was used to collect FQoL data across several countries in the early 2000s. The experiences of survey respondents and administrators and subsequent data analysis suggested modifications that resulted in an updated version—the FQoLS‐2006. This new version focuses on 9 areas of family life: health, finances, family relationships, support from other people, support from disability‐related services, influence of values, careers and planning for careers, leisure and recreation, and community interaction. The authors explore each of these areas in relation to 6 underlying concepts: importance, opportunities, initiative, attainment, stability, and satisfaction. Other sections entail obtaining information on the family make‐up, family member, or members, with intellectual disability, and an overall summary of FQoL. The authors note that information from the FQoLS‐2006 should be useful for a wide variety of purposes related to providing supports to individuals and families.

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Frequent residential moves in childhood may be stressful. Because introverts find making new friends in a new town more difficult than extraverts, the authors predicted that residential moves would be more negatively associated with well-being among introverts than among extraverts. To test this hypothesis, the authors collected salivary cortisol samples from morning to evening for two consecutive days, in addition to self-reports of well-being. In general, the authors found support for this prediction among European American participants but not for African Americans or Asian Americans. Extraversion seems to buffer the stress of residential moves among European Americans, whereas it does not seem to play as important a role to this end among African and Asian Americans.