Psychometric properties of a short version of the family assessment device

Abstract

The McMaster Family Assessment Device has been designed to capture seven key dimensions of family functioning. It allows the assessment of problem solving, communication, roles, affective involvement, affective responsiveness, behavioral control, and general functioning of a family. This paper reports some psychometric properties of a 35-item short version of the Family Assessment Device. Based on the responses given by 647 Romanian adolescents to the original 53-item version and the corrected item-total correlations ≥ 0.30, between four and seven items were retained for each scale of the Family Assessment Device. A hypothetical measurement model with seven first-order latent factors fitted satisfactorily to the data. An alternative model with one second-order latent factor also provided satisfactory fit with the data. Internal consistencies were good for the General Functioning, Affective Involvement, Affective Responsiveness, and Behavioral Control, and satisfactory for the Problem Solving, Communication, and Roles scales. For the short Family Assessment Device, test-retest reliabilities ranged between 0.61 and 0.84 (N = 149). Empirical evidence for construct validity is also reported. Scales from the short version of the Family Assessment Device showed positive correlations with perceived social support from family and satisfaction with family. The findings of our study support the use of the 35-item version of the Family Assessment Device to assess the overall functioning of Romanian adolescents' families.

Psychometric properties of the Portuguese adaptation of General Functioning of Family Assessment Device: A comparative study.

“…Family functioning plays a protective role either in adolescents with chronic illness, like Type I Diabetes (T1D) or in healthy adolescents (Turliuc, Ciudin, & Robu, 2016). The prevalence of Portuguese adolescents with T1D was about 3327 cases in individuals aged between 0 and 19, in 2015 (Portuguese Society of Diabetology, 2016).…”

“…The FAD-GF has good psychometric properties in the assessment of family functioning in different types of nonclinical, psychiatric, and medical samples in adolescents and adults (Baronet, 2003; Beevers, Wells, & Miller, 2007; Boterhoven de Haan, Hafekost, Lawrence, Sawyer, & Zubrick, 2015; Byles, Byrne, Boyle, & Offord, 1988; Bylund, Årestedt, Benzein, Thorell, & Persson, 2016; Cooke, Marais, Cavanagh, Kendall, & Priddis, 2015; Hausken et al, 2019; Pires, Assis, Avanci, & Pesce, 2016; Smith, Montaño, Maynard, & Miloh, 2017; Shek, 2001; Thastum et al, 2009; Turliuc et al, 2016; Weinstock & Miller, 2010). In Cooke and colleagues’ study (2015), fathers presented worse family functioning when compared to mothers, which may be an indicator of unhealthy functioning and may provide important information regarding the family structure and parental attitudes (Öngel Atar et al, 2016).…”

Engaging the Family in Recovery: Outcomes of a Community-Based Family Intervention

“…Based on McMaster's model of family functioning (Epstein, Bishop, & Levine, 1978), it measures six dimensions of family life. For this study, only the 12-item scale that measures the family's general functioning was utilized (Boterhoven de Haan, Hafekost, Lawrence, Sawyer, & Zubrick, 2015; Turliuc, Ciudin, & Roby, 2016). It has a 4-point Likert scale, such that the higher the score, the more they perceive their family as problematic.…”