The Family Functioning Index—Five Year Test-Retest Reliability and Implications for Use

In planning health services for children, it is desirable to identify those at high risk for mental health problems by utilizing data about family functioning. The Family Functioning Index (FFI) of I. B. Pless & B. Satterwhite, (see SA 1941/H3314) was developed as a simple, easily administered t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of comparative family studies 1976-04, Vol.7 (1), p.111-116
Main Authors: SATTERWHITE, BETTY B., ZWEIG, SUSAN R., IKER, HOWARD P., PLESS, BARRY
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Child health services
Child/Children/Childhood
Chronic diseases
Correlations
Family/Families
Functioning
Index/Indexes/Indexing (see also Scale, Test)
Marital satisfaction
Mental health
Reliability
RESEARCH NOTES
School age children
Utility/Utilization
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Summary:In planning health services for children, it is desirable to identify those at high risk for mental health problems by utilizing data about family functioning. The Family Functioning Index (FFI) of I. B. Pless & B. Satterwhite, (see SA 1941/H3314) was developed as a simple, easily administered test to reflect the dynamics of family interaction & consists of 15 questions tapping such areas of family interaction as marital satisfaction, f of disagreement, communication, problems solving, & feelings of happiness & closeness. Administration time is about 15 minutes & the scoring is simple & rapid. The original index comprised a section of an interview administered in 1968 to the parents of 399 school age children in a study of adjustment to chronic physical disorders. This report establishes its stability by describing test-retest reliability of the Index over a 5 year period. In 1973, a sample of 30 families was selected for reinterview in a manner designed to insure that the distribution of scores would be similar to that of the previous population. The Pearson product moment r between the original & retest FFI total scores was +.83 (p
ISSN:0047-2328
1929-9850
DOI:10.3138/jcfs.7.1.111