Publisher:
Mind Garden
(650) 261-3500
www.mindgarden.com

Initial Material Cost:
Manual: $56
Interpretative Report Forms: $1 each or $34 for 25 FES Item Booklets,
Expectations and Ideal Forms: $2 each or $48 for 25;
Real Form: $1 each or $32 for 25
Scoring Key: $15 each
Self-Scorable Answer Sheets: $1 each or $41 for 25
Non-Paid Answer Sheets: $1 each or $16 for 25
Self-Scorable Preview Kit: $57

Representativeness of Norming Sample:
Form R was normed on a sample of 1,432 normal families and 788 distressed families. The normal families were diverse in terms of geography, family type, race, and age. They also included 601 families that served as normal comparison groups in studies of alcoholic and depressed families.1 The distressed families had members who were alcohol abusers, depressed or psychiatric patients, family clinic patients, on probation or parole, and adolescents or younger children in crisis situations. Form I was normed on a sample of 591 individuals from varied family types, including normal and distressed individuals. No separate norming sample was drawn for Form E. Form E scores are normed using the Form R sample. Cross-cultural normative samples are available from the translated and culturally adapted versions of the FES.

Languages:
English, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Estonian, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Marathi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.

Type of Assessment:
Child (11 years or older) and parent report on family environment.

Age Range and Administration Interval:
Not applicable. Focus is on the family environment.

Personnel, Training, Administration, and Scoring Requirements:
Instructions for administering the FES are self-explanatory and no training is required. It usually takes individuals 15 to 20 minutes to complete each of the three forms. It takes approximately 10 minutes to obtain raw scores for all 90 items.

Summary
Initial Material Cost: 3 (> $200)
Reliability: 3 (.65 or higher).
Validity: 1 (concurrent not available).
Norming Sample Characteristics: 2 (normed within past 15 years; diverse but not representative).
Ease of Administration and Scoring: 2 (self-administered; scored by someone with basic clerical skills)

Description: The Family Environment Scale (FES) is one of 10 Social Climate Scales, each assessing the climate in a different setting with 10 subscales organized into three dimensions—relationship, personal growth, and system maintenance. The FES measures family social environment using three forms with 90 true-false items: (1) the Expectations Form (Form E) for information on expectations from a new family environment, (2) the Real Form (Form R) for information on perceptions of the current family environment, and (3) the Ideal form (Form I) for information on the preferred family environment. In addition, there is a 30-item pictorial children’s version for use with children between the ages of 5 and 11. The FES is administered to family members as a paper- and pencil-inventory with true or false answers.

Uses of Information: The FES can be used for the following purposes: (1) understanding problems in family functioning, (2) serving as a benchmark to evaluate the impact of an intervention, (3) providing feedback to families as a means to promote change, (4) evaluating how a family has been affected by a transition, life crisis or change (provided comparable information is available about the family prior to the event), (5) appraising and improving the family climate parents create, (6) strengthening families as cohesive units, (7) identifying risks for various problems, such as, depression, substance abuse, or family violence.

Reliability: (1) Internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha): the subscale alphas for Form R ranged from .61 for independence to .78 for cohesion, intellectual-cultural orientation, and moral-religious emphasis. No alphas were reported for Form I; however, the authors reported that they were similar to Form R alphas. (2) Test-retest reliability: The Form R subscale reliability coefficients ranged from .68 for independence to .86 for cohesion with a 2-month testing interval and .54 for independence to .91 for moral-religious with a 4-month testing interval.

Validity: The authors reported, as evidence of construct validity, studies that found results on the FES subscales to be consistent with the results on other instruments measuring the same construct and the lack of a relationship with results on instruments measuring different constructs. These instruments included the Social Support Appraisals (SS-A; Vaux et al., 1986), the Social Support Questionnaire (Sarason, et al., 1987), the Locke-Wallace Marital Adjustment Scale (Waring et al., 1981), the Spanier Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS; Abbott & Brody, 1985), the Parental Bonding Instrument (Sarason, et al., 1987), the Family Assessment Device (FAD) and the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES-II; Dickerson and Coyne, 1987), FACES-III (Edman, Cole, and Howard, 1990), the Structural Family Interaction Scale – revised (Perosa and Perosa, 1990), and the Family System Test (FAST; Feldman and Gehring, 1988), the Family Sculpture Test, and an adapted version of the Bowerman and Bahr Identification Scale (Russell, 1980). The authors did not report any statistics on the magnitude of the relationships.

Method of Scoring: Individuals complete subscale questions with true or false answers on separate answer sheets by placing an X in the appropriate column. The examiner then uses a template to score the responses by summing the number of X’s in each column. When the FES is administered to more than one family member, the subscale raw scores for each family member are averaged in order to obtain the family’s mean raw score for each subscale. Tables are provided to assist the clinician in converting the raw score to a standard score.

Interpretability: Subscale responses are compared to those of a group of normal families, using standard scores, which have a mean of 50 and standard deviation of 10. The manual provides tables for converting Form R subscale and family incongruence raw scores into standard scores. The same table can be used to convert Form E raw scores into standard scores. Program staff with a basic knowledge of statistics can calculate equivalent percentiles based on the family’s standard scores, the mean, and the standard deviation. The manual provides case studies to help interpret the results.

Training Support: None described

Adaptations/Special Instructions for Individuals with Disabilities: It is recommended that the FES be administered using tape-recorded or computerized instructions for those individuals who have short attention spans or cannot read at a sixth-grade level. It may also be helpful to administer the FES in individual interviews for poor functioning residents of treatment or residential care facilities. Some people will not be able to understand the questions, including children under the age of 11 and individuals who are mentally retarded, seriously impaired psychiatrically, or who suffer from a chronic brain disorder or cognitive dysfunction.

Report Preparation Support: A sample narrative report is provided in order to help clinicians interpret the results from the FES.

References:

Abbott, D.A. & G.H. Brody. The relation of child age, gender and number of children to the marital adjustment of wives. Journal of Marriage and the Family, vol. 47, 1985, pp. 77-84.

Dickerson, V.C. and J.C. Coyne. Family cohesion and control: A multitrait/multimethod study, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, vol. 13, 1987, pp. 275-285.

Feldman, S.S. and T.M. Gehring. Changing perceptions of family cohesion and power across adolescence, Child Development, vol. 59, 1988, pp. 1034-1045.

Moos, Rudolf and Bernice Moos. Family Environment Scale Manual: Development, Applications, Research, Third Edition. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc., 1994.

Perosa, L.M. and S.L. Perosa. Convergent and discriminant validity for family self-report measures, Educational and Psychological Measurement, vol. 50, 1990, pp. 855-868.

Russell, C. A methodological study of family cohesion and adaptability, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, vol. 6, 1980, pp. 459-470.

Sarason, B.R., et al. Interrelations of social support measures : Theoretical and practical implications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 52, 1987, pp. 813-832.

Vaux, A., et al. The Social Support Appraisals (SS-A) Scale : Studies of reliability and validity. American Journal of Community Psychology, vol. 14, 1986, pp. 195-219.

Waring, E.M., et al. Dimensions of intimacy in marriage. Psychiatry, vol. 44, 1981, pp. 169-175.