Factor Structure and Concurrent Validity of the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation Behavior Scale for Children

1990

J. Clin. Psychol.

After meeting for 33 hours over 7 weeks, 64 undergraduates from 11 small interpersonal skills groups rated themselves on Schutz's (1958) Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientations‐Behavior (FIRO‐B). Three weeks and 17 more group interaction hours later, they also described each samegroup participant, including self, on Lorr and McNair's (1963) Interpersonal Behavior Inventory (IBI). Correlations between self‐ratings on 6 FIRO‐B and 15 IBI scales yielded 25 significant statistically (p <.05) values, but merely 5 among FIRO‐B's 90 parallel correlations with individual's mean IBI ratings from pooled small group peers. Of all 30 significant correlations, 19 linked FIRO‐B's overlapping affection and inclusion measures positively, but narrowly, with 4 IBI scales that address affiliativeness/sociability. The findings challenge Schutz's (1958) paradoxical claim that FIRO‐B validly assesses interpersonal behavior by an intrapersonal method.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does FIRO-B relate better to interpersonal or intrapersonal behavior?

1990

J. Clin. Psychol.

“…Ryan, Maguire, and Ryan's (1970) strong conclusion that "FIRO-B cannot be said to possess construct validityH (p.-425) as an instrument for assessing the dimensions of Schutz's . -interpersonal theory has been supplemented by other findings (Burton & Goggins, 1987;Hurley, in press;Salminen, 1988) challenging FIRO-B's validity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dubious Support for Firo-B's Validity

1989

Psychol Rep

The evidence that Floyd (1988) recently cited as supporting FIRO-B's validity was reviewed. Without hypotheses about relationships between the 25 items of a Living Group Questionnaire and FIRO-B's 6 scales, Floyd determined all correlations between these measures separately for undergraduate males and females. The .05 level of statistical s~gn~flcance was reached by 15 correlations among 300, about the number expected by chance, and none was significant for both genders. Flawed in other respects, Floyd's report gave no firm evidence to counter increasing challenges to FIRO-B's validity.Despite over 30 years of marketing and about 25 annual Social Science Citation Index references in recent years, concerns about the validity of Schutz's (1958) Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientations-Behavior (FIRO-B) inventory seem to be rising. Even a FIRO-B supporter, Floyd (1988), observed that, "no clear picture has emerged from past efforts to assess the validity of the FIRO-B scales" (p. 924). Because FIRO-B addresses interpersonal conduct only from the limited perspective of selfreports, such problems may be inevitable. Schutz emphasized that FIRO-B aimed to appraise "how a person behaves rather than how he feels" (1958, p. 58), but whether one's behavior is reported more accurately by self or by informed others is unclear (Nisbett & Smith, 1989). These several considerations suggest that Floyd's later claim of findings supportive of FIRO-B's validity merits close attention.Floyd correlated scores on FIRO-B's six scales with each of 25 items from a Living Group Questionnaire (LGQ) concerned with attitudes and practices that undergraduate students viewed as typical of successful campus housing groups without, surprisingly, formulating any hypotheses linking these measures. For samples of 56 men and 66 women, erroneously said to total 123 persons, Floyd reported that the 25 questionnaire items yielded seven statistically significant gender differences versus none on FIRO-B. Errors in Floyd's Table 2 (p. 927) clouded this latter point, as the numbers given for the over-all sample's mean (3.39) and standard deviation (2.06) for FIRO-B's Affection expressed scale were substantially below the parallel values for both men and women-a statistical impossibility. Of 300 (25 x 6 x 2) Pearson correlations between questionnaire items and FIRO-B scales, 10 were statistically significant ( p < .05, 2-tailed) for men versus 5 for women but none overlapped. Because 15 significant correlations at the .05 'Request reprints from John Hurley, Psychology Department, Michigan Stare University, East Lansing, MI 48824.

Firo-B's Dissociation from Two Central Dimensions of Interpersonal Behavior

1991

Psychol Rep

Each addressing interpersonal behavior's central features, three questionnaires were administered to 64 participants in 11 small personal development groups. Individuals rated their own and each other's within-group behavior twice, near group Hours 23 and 43, on separate scales of acceptance of others and self. They made similar ratings on the Interpersonal Behavior Inventory after groups' Hour 50 termination. Near Hour 33, they made self-ratings only on the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientations-Behavior (FIRO-B). Factor analyses of all correlations among the pertinent 6 peer- and 12 self-based measures yielded two salient factors, labeled acceptance of others and acceptance of self, each encompassing ratings from both self and pooled group peers. Also found were two exclusively self-based factors, one composed of four or five FIRO-B scales, the other of solo indices of the FIRO-B and Interpersonal Behavior Inventory. These findings challenge FIRO-B's usefulness for assessing the interpersonal domain's principal dimensions.