Development and testing of the Survey of Family Environment (SFE): a novel instrument to measure family functioning and needs for family support.
OBJECTIVE
Hohashi's Concentric Sphere Family Environment Model (CSFEM; Hohashi & Honda, 2011) is a newly proposed family nursing theory for holistically understanding the family environment that acts on family well-being. The purpose of this article is to develop and psychometrically test the Japanese version of the Survey of Family Environment (SFE-J), grounded in the CSFEM, for measuring family's perceived family functioning and family's perceived needs for family support.


METHODS
The SFE-J is a 30-item self-administered instrument that assesses five domains (suprasystem, macrosystem, microsystem, family internal environment system, and chronosystem) and has been subjected to rigorous reliability and validity investigations among paired partners in child-rearing families (N of family = 1,990).


RESULTS
Internal consistency reliability was high as measured by Cronbach's alpha coefficients. Temporal stability over a 2-week interval was supported by high (substantial or perfect) and significant intraclass correlation coefficients. The total score for the SFE-J was significantly correlated with the Japanese version of the Feetham Family Functioning Survey (FFFS-J), indicating an acceptable concurrent validity. Construct validity was supported by a confirmatory factor analysis that evaluated the five-factor structure to measure the concept of CSFEM. Results also demonstrate that the SFE-J family functioning scores show no significant differences between paired partners.


CONCLUSIONS
The SFE-J is a reliable and valid instrument to assess not only intrafamily functioning but also interfamily functioning and, by identifying items/domains with high requirements for family support, serves to facilitate the providing of appropriate support to families.
Department of Nursing, Kobe University Graduate School of Health Sciences, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan. naohiro@hohashi.org
Naohiro
N
Hohashi
Junko
J
Honda
D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology*; D005192:Family Health; D022143:Family Nursing; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D008297:Male; D009730:Nursing Assessment; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires