Assessment of the psychometric properties of the Family Management Measure.
OBJECTIVE
This paper reports development of the Family Management Measure (FaMM) of parental perceptions of family management of chronic conditions.


METHODS
By telephone interview, 579 parents of children age 3 to 19 with a chronic condition (349 partnered mothers, 165 partners, 65 single mothers) completed the FaMM and measures of child functional status and behavioral problems and family functioning. Analyses addressed reliability, factor structure, and construct validity.


RESULTS
Exploratory factor analysis yielded six scales: Child's Daily Life, Condition Management Ability, Condition Management Effort, Family Life Difficulty, Parental Mutuality, and View of Condition Impact. Internal consistency reliability ranged from .72 to .91, and test-retest reliability from .71 to .94. Construct validity was supported by significant correlations in hypothesized directions between FaMM scales and established measures.


CONCLUSIONS
Results support FaMM's; reliability and validity, indicating it performs in a theoretically meaningful way and taps distinct aspects of family response to childhood chronic conditions.
Knafl
Kathleen
K
School of Nursing, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-746, USA. kknafl@email.unc.edu
Deatrick
Janet A
JA
Gallo
Agatha
A
Dixon
Jane
J
Grey
Margaret
M
Knafl
George
G
O'Malley
Jean
J
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult