Family Concepts and Their Measurement: Things Are Seldom What They Seem

Abstract

An empirical examination of the degree of association of dimensions elicited by two family assessment instruments is presented. There were no associations among dimensions whose descriptors suggested a good amount of similarity. The results strongly suggest additional study of correspondence among assessment methods that appear to tap similar family properties, with particular attention directed to the correspondence between self-report and direct observational procedures.

A comparison of self-report measures of two family dimensions: Control and cohesion

“…It is interesting that the level of convergence was higher than has been found in prior studies comparing behavioral and self-report measures of cohesion (Oliveri & Reiss, 1984;Russell, 1980;. In part, the discrepancy may be attributable to confounds related to measurement type.…”

“…Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor Recently, several measures have been developed to assess two conceptually important family dimensions: cohesion and control (Bowen, 1960;Cromwell & Olson, 1975;Forman & Hagan, 1983;Haley, 1976;Minuchin, 1974;Moos et al, 1974;Olson et al, 1983). The task of clarifying the relationships among measures has begun (Oliveri & Reiss, 1984; and is an encouraging step to insure clear and consistent application and interpretation of these constructs across measures. Less encouraging, however, has been the fact that empirical studies have found relatively little relationship between self-report and behavioral measures of these two constructs (Oliveri & Reiss, 1984;Russell, 1980;.…”

“…Several researchers (Oliveri & Reiss, 1984;Olson, 1985; have argued that the use of diverse measurement techniques in these studies greatly affects empirical congruence and that the lack of convergent findings is not surprising. Olson (1985) has identified several strategies to examine congruence in a less confounded fashion.…”

“…The task of clarifying the relationships among measures has begun (Oliveri & Reiss, 1984; and is an encouraging step to insure clear and consistent application and interpretation of these constructs across measures. Less encouraging, however, has been the fact that empirical studies have found relatively little relationship between self-report and behavioral measures of these two constructs (Oliveri & Reiss, 1984;Russell, 1980;.…”

Assessment of families

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