Abstract
Parent and family characteristics are important considerations in the etiology and treatment of childhood disruptive behavior problems. The current study investigated the psychometric properties of the General Functioning (GF) scale of the McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD) in families referred for treatment of childhood disruptive behavior difficulties. Participants included 459 families with a child between the ages of 6 and 12 years who were referred for treatment of disruptive behavior. Prior to treatment, mothers and/or fathers completed questionnaires assessing family functioning, child psychopathology and associated functional impairment, parenting behavior, and parent psychopathology. The factor structure, internal consistency, and concurrent validity of three versions of the FAD GF scale were examined, including a one-factor, 12-item model, a one-factor, 6-item model, and a 3-factor, 12-item model. All three models had adequate fit based on confirmatory factor analysis. Across models, family dysfunction scores had small positive associations with child psychopathology, functional impairment, inconsistent parenting behaviors, and parents’ history of internalizing disorders, and small negative associations with positive parenting behaviors, providing evidence for the concurrent validity of the scale. The FAD GF scale provides a valid and reliable measure of family dysfunction in families experiencing disruptive child behavior. Researchers and clinicians may consider using an abbreviated 6-item version of the scale or a three-domain version of the scale as valid alternatives to the standard 12-item administration and scoring.
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Data Availability
Data are available on request from the authors.
Notes
High residual covariances between two indicators in a factor analysis can suggest that these indicators share a common influence that is not explained by their relationship with the factor. Including an error covariance term for the two items, when theoretically justified (i.e., when there is a logical explanation for their shared error variance), can improve model fit by better characterizing the associations among indicators.
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Funding
Funding for the current study was provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research through project funding awarded to B.A. (#MOP142459) and a Canada Graduate Scholarship awarded to S.B. (GSD-164166). Additional funding support was provided by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship awarded to M.C.
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All authors contributed to study conceptualization and the interpretation of data. S.B., M.C. and B.A.: contributed to the acquisition of data; S.B. and D.F.: performed statistical analyses; B.A.: obtained operational funding for the study. The first draft of the manuscript was written by S.B. and all authors contributed to manuscript revisions and approved the final manuscript.
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and consent: All study procedures were approved by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health institutional research ethics board (Protocol reference #038/2016) and were conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Consent and assent (respectively) were collected from participating caregivers and children prior to study participation.
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Badovinac, S.D., Colasanto, M., Flora, D.B. et al. Validation of a Measure of Family Functioning in a Clinic-referred Sample of Children with Disruptive Behavior. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 46, 87–102 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-023-10116-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-023-10116-x