Rating the quality of the family environment in different cultures.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the extent to which clinicians from different cultures agree when rating the quality of a child's family environment and the effect of country, language, and training factors on these ratings.


METHODS
Eighty-seven health professionals from Malaysia, Spain, Australia, Indonesia, the United States, Denmark, and Singapore rated 7 case vignettes using the Global Family Environment Scale. Half (54%) were psychiatrists. One quarter (26%) performed the ratings after attending a training session, the rest (n = 64, 74%) after reading a training manual.


RESULTS
Overall, interrater agreement (intraclass r) was 0.84 (95% confidence interval: 0.68-0.96). There were no significant differences in agreement according to country, language, training, or professional group, although there were country differences in the ratings given to 2 vignettes. The majority of raters found the description of the anchor points (86%), training manual (95%), and case vignettes (97%) clear.


CONCLUSIONS
Clinicians from different cultures seem to be able to make global ratings of the quality of the family environment that are reliable and consistent when using case vignettes. This can be achieved with little training. Global ratings of the quality of the family environment may be a useful tool in mental health research and clinical work.
Rey
J M
JM
University of Sydney, Australia. jrey@mail.usyd.edu.au
Peng
R
R
Morales-Blanquez
C
C
Widyawati
I
I
Peralta
V
V
Walter
G
G
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001315:Australia; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D003718:Denmark; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007214:Indonesia; D008296:Malaysia; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012846:Singapore; D013030:Spain; D014481:United States