The Assessment of Strategies |
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| In Families - Effectiveness | ||
(ASF-E) |
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| ______________________________________________________ | ||
| ______________________________________________________ | ||
| Development Of The ASF-E | ||
| Method: | ||
| *Development of an item pool by a group of professionals from various social sciences and family service agencies. | ||
| *Revision and validation of items (content validity): Independent rating of items by five family experts; exclusion of items not unanimously rated. | ||
| *Item administration: Tool completed by adult family members (one per family) from a community sample of 622. | ||
| *Exploratory factor analysis (PC analysis with Varimax orthogonal rotation) | ||
| *Selection of best items for further testing (item reduction) (construct validity) | ||
| *Retesting items with community and special samples | ||
| *Reliability testing (internal consistency) | ||
| *Discriminant validity testing (clinical versus community subjects) | ||
| Samples: | ||
| 1) Community sample N=622. | ||
| Age Range: 18-90 years | ||
| Gender: Females 68% | ||
| Males 32% | ||
| Race: White 56% | ||
| Black 37% | ||
| Others 7% | ||
| Family Type: Adult and Elderly Families 40% | ||
| Families with Adolescents andchildren 60% | ||
| Clinical Families 37% | ||
| (mental illness, domestic violence, substance abuse) | ||
| Community Families 63% | ||
| 2) Community sample N=52 | ||
| Age Range: 30-57 years | ||
| Gender: Females 50% | ||
| Males 50% | ||
| Race: All White | ||
| Family Type: Adults and Elderly Families 35% | ||
| Families with Adolescents and Children 65% | ||
| No Clinical Families. | ||
| 3) Clinical sample N=117 | ||
| Substance abuse residential treatment. | ||
| Residents (90% male) with one family member each. | ||
| Mean Age: 40.5years | ||
| Gender: Females 49% | ||
| Males 51% | ||
| Ethnicity: Black 80% | ||
| White 14% | ||
| Other 6% | ||
| Family Type: Adult and Elderly Families 60% | ||
| Families with Children 40% | ||
| Income: < $10,000 40% | ||
| $10,000-25,000 34% | ||
| > $25,000 19% | ||
| Missing 7% | ||
| Education: Less than High School 28% | ||
| High School and More 72% | ||
| 4) Community sample N = 237 | ||
| Relatively young, well educated | ||
| Ethnicity: White 67% | ||
| Black 23% | ||
| Other 10% | ||
| 5) Families with chronic pain N = 30 | ||
| Pain lasting from 1 to 43 years (average 9 years). | ||
| Age Range 31 - 82 years | ||
| Ethnicity: White 83% | ||
| Black. 17% | ||
| Education: Well-educated | ||
| Income: Moderate | ||
| 6) Community sample N = 445 | ||
| Age range 18 - 81years | ||
| Mean Age 36 years | ||
| Gender: Females 65% | ||
| Male 35% | ||
| Ethnicity: White 55% | ||
| Black 14% | ||
| Hispanic 12% | ||
| Asian 11% | ||
| Native American 5% | ||
| Other 3% | ||
| Family Type: Adult Families 55% | ||
| With Children < 18 years 44% | ||
| Missing 1% | ||
| Two Parents 53% | ||
| Single Parent 18% | ||
| One Generation 28% | ||
| Missing 1% | ||
| Income: < $10,000 11% | ||
| $10,000 - 25,000 23% | ||
| > $25,000 66% | ||
| Education: Less than High School 4% | ||
| High School 42% | ||
| College 54% | ||
| Results: | ||
| Factor Analysis yielded 4 factors initially:
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| Stability (System maintenance and coherence) 6 items | ||
| Growth (System change and individuation) 6 items | ||
| External Support 3 items. | ||
| Internal Consistency -Reliability | ||
| Cronbach's alpha . Subscales .60 to .80 | ||
| Total Score: .84 | ||
| Details, see Friedemann, 1991. | ||
| In all subsequent samples, external support did not factor | ||
| as an independent dimension, especially with minority | ||
| subjects, but was folded into the others. This was | ||
| consistent with the framework. Therefore, these items were | ||
| assigned to System Change or System Maintenance. | ||
| Factor structure was indicative of all four dimensions. In | ||
| each testing, a few items were added, some taken off. In all | ||
| test runs, system maintenance and coherence factored | ||
| together. Items were added to the Growth dimensions for | ||
| better reliability; reliability for Growth ranged from .50 to .62 | ||
| in various test runs. | ||
| Test-Retest Reliability | ||
| with 43 substance abusing families (sample 3) was | ||
| satisfactory: | ||
| Stability at 1 month r = .94 | ||
| 2 months r = .85 | ||
| Growth at 1 month r = .80 | ||
| 2 months r = .56 | ||
| (Growth was expected to improve in these
families)
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| Concurrent Validity with the same sample: | ||
| ASF was tested against FES (Moos). Values were | ||
| unsatisfactory. The internal consistency of the FES | ||
| with this sample was very low (.008 to .34). The FES could | ||
| not be used with minority substance abusing families. | ||
| Testing for Type III Error: | ||
| Congruence between items and the actual phenomenon - | ||
| 1) Convergence of intended and subject-ascribed | ||
| meaning of items | ||
| 2) Convergence of score and qualitative | ||
| description of family dynamics | ||
| Results very satisfactory. | ||
| Details, see Friedemann and Smith, 1997. | ||