Family functioning is the primary outcome our lab’s interventions are designed to improve, yet it is difficult to measure validly across cultures, and few instruments have been developed for use in sub-Saharan Africa. The Family Togetherness Scale was developed to address that gap.
Developing the items
Formative qualitative interviews with Kenyan families generated a set of candidate items covering family organization, emotional closeness, and communication and problem-solving. Trained non-specialist local interviewers administered the items in Kiswahili and English to 44 adults and 30 youth ages 8 to 17. The same interviewers conducted a structured clinical interview adapted from the Global Assessment of Relational Functioning, which provided a gold standard rating of each family’s functioning.
The final scale
A mixed-methods item reduction procedure produced a final 30-item scale that correctly classified families in distress in 89 percent of cases by adult report and 76 percent by youth report. The study also established locally validated cut-off scores, an uncommon feature among family measures used outside the settings where they were developed. The scale is freely available to other researchers.
Key Publications
Puffer, E. S., Giusto, A., Rieder, A. D., Friis-Healy, E. A., Ayuku, D., & Green, E. P. (2021). Development of the Family Togetherness Scale: A mixed-methods validation study in Kenya. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 662991.