Assessment of family functioning in chinese adolescents: The chinese family assessment instrument

This chapter reports the psychometric properties of a locally constructed measure of family assessment - the Chinese Family Assessment Instrument (C-FAI). There were three steps in the development of this scale. In the first step, a literature review was carried out to identify the basic elements of optimal families and the related assessment tools. The literature review showed that different components on optimal families have been proposed in the Western literature. The second step in the scale development process was to examine how Chinese people view healthy families. Based on data collected previously, the views of 416 Chinese parents and their adolescent children on the attributes of a happy family, collected via individual interviews, were examined. Results showed that Chinese parents and their children regarded the absence of conflict, interpersonal harmony, mutuality, connectedness, and positive parent-adolescent relationship as important attributes of a happy family. The final step was to generate items by integrating the information collected via preceding two steps. Initially, items based on those attributes that were commonly proposed in the West and emerged from the qualitative study as attributes of healthy families were developed. To evaluate the psychometric properties of the (C-FAI), three studies were conducted. In study 1, the test-retest reliability, internal consistency, concurrent validity and construct validity of the C-FAI were studied. In study 2, the reliability and validity of the C-FAI were examined in a clinical group and a nonclinical group. In Study 3, the reliability and validity of the C-FAI in a community sample were investigated.